Humanities Network, Vol. 2, No. 2 (Spring 1978)

HUMANITIES

NETWORK

Newsletter of the California Council for the Humanities in Public Policy Spring, 1978 Volume 2, No. 2

This special issue on the Serrano v. Priest Decision is published in cooperation with the

California Coalition for Fair School Finance

Serrano v. Priest:
A New Beginning?

“I believe in the existence of a great, immortal, immutable principle
of natural law or natural ethics--which proves the absolute right to

an education of every human being that comes into the world ...”

--Horace Mann, Quoted in the Serrano Decision

Historical Overview

Serrano v. Priest:

End of an Era?

By Charles VZollenberg , History Department, Laney College

Dr. Wo lien berg delivered the opening address at a Coalition-sponsored
seminar on the Serrano Decision, which is described in the "Project
Humanist's Story" on page 2 of this issue.

By Dorothy Reed
Editor, Humanities Network

The Serrano vs Priest decision that the
quality of a California school child’s
education must not depend on the wealth
of his neighbors — came down from the
California Supreme Court in the fall of 1976
after eight years of litigation and appeals.
To carry out its mandate requires a major
change in the way California schools are
financed, and the process of achieving this
change through legislation has just begun.
A year and a half ago the California
Council for the Humanities awarded a dual
grant to a citizen’s organization and a
television station for a public information
project to familiarize the people of the
state with the decision, its implications for
education, and any legislation that was
introduced or passed aimed at im¬
plementing it.

This issue of the Humanities Network
covers some of the activities of that
project, carried out jointly by the
California Coalition for Fair School
Finance (made up of special committees
from the American Association of
University Women, the League of Women
Voters, and the California PTA) and
KCET-TV in Los Angeles who made a
documentary film called “Do Dollars
Make Scholars?”

These two grants were the CCHPP’s
first “Special Projects,” sponsored by
statewide groups and addressing policy
issues of state wide significance over a
relatively long period of time. Extra
funding was also provided by the League
of Women Voters Education Fund from a
grant by the Ford Foundation.

Continued on page 15

Future historians may view Serrano v.
Priest as the last chapter in a remarkable,
twenty-year story of judicial activism on
behalf of equal educational rights. Since
Brown v. Board of Education in 1954,
courts throughout the land have in¬
tervened in local school affairs to strike
down racial segregation. The California
Supreme Court’s 1971 Serrano decision
seemed to herald a new stage in this trend
of judicial activism : direct intervention in
the sphere of education finance to
eliminate massive inequalities in revenues
available to local school districts due to
differences in property values. But two
years later, in San Antonio School District
v. Rodriguez, the United States Supreme
Court rejected the California court’s
reasoning and refused to apply the
Serrano doctrine nationwide. Serrano still
stands in this state, for the California court
based its decision on the equal protection
clauses of both the federal and state
constitutions. Courts in some other states
also have adopted the Serrano argument,
but a judicially inspired, nationwide
reform of public school ffnance is not in
the cards. Indeed, even the school in¬
tegration effort seems to be losing steam,
and Serrano may well represent the end of
an important era in American judicial
history.

Legally and historically, Serrano cannot
be separated from the fight against school
segregation. The constitutional basis of
the Serrano decision was the finding that
education is a “fundamental interest”
covered by the equal protection clauses of
the United States and California con¬
stitutions. In affirming that principle,
Justice Raymond. L. Sullivan’s 1971
opinion not only used Brown v. Board of
Education as precedent, but also cited
several important California cases

resulting from the long struggle against
racial segregation and exclusion in this
state’s public schools.

That struggle is more than a century old,
for California’s school system began as a
segregated enterprise. In 1855 California
law required that the state school fund,
created by the sale of public lands, be
distributed to local communities “in
proportion to the number of white
children” in each locality. In 1859
California’s Superintendent of Public
Instruction, Andrew Jackson Moulder,
warned that “to force African, Chinese
and Diggers into one school . . . must result
in the ruin of the schools.” Moulder
believed that “the great mass of our
citizens will not associate in terms of
equality with these inferior races; nor will
they consent that their children do so.”
During the next decade, non-whites
usually were forced to attend segregated
schools and sometimes were excluded
entirely from public education.

Black parents eventually brought suit to
end these practices, and in 1874, in Ward v.
Flood, the California Supreme Court
issued its first school segregation opinion
and in the process began a trail of legal
precedent leading to Serrano. The court
Continued on page 15

For those who have been following the
current cultural policy debates at various
levels of government, it may come as a
welcome surprise to see that some clear
lines of new directions are beginning to
emerge from what has been a rather
confused picture. There seems to be a
growing consensus, at least in the sphere
of the humanities, that public support
should accommodate both the ad¬
vancement of knowledge within
humanities disciplines and the promotion
of easy accessibility of the humanities to a
wide spectrum of society.

Our own experience during the past year
supports this view. Last year when
Congress passed the new authorizing
legislation for the National Endowment
for the Humanities, state programs like
ours were given a new opportunity to
assess existing program goals and
guidelines in light of general public and
scholarly needs and interests. To carry out
this assessment in California, our Council
has conducted a thorough review and
evaluation which included surveys, a state
conference, public meetings from Eureka
to San Diego, an analytical study, and
informal discussions with a wide variety of
groups and individuals throughout the
state. Participants have included
representatives from community groups,
minority organizations, the scholarly
community, professional associations,
labor, business, the media and others from
all sectors of society — both critics and
supporters, both those knowledgeable of
the CCHPP program and those who had
previously never heard of us.

Continued on page 7

Next deadline for receiving proposals: April 30, 1978
Principal Office:

312 Sutter St., Suite 601, San Francisco, CA 94108
Southern California Office:

Humanities No. 136 , Santa Monica College
Santa Monica, CA 90405

PAGE 4 HUMANITIES NETWORK SPRING 1978

The Right

The purpose of these meetings is to
explore some of the wider social and moral
ramifications of the issue of public school
financing and to do so in the context set by
the recent legal decisions in California
that bear on that issue. I confess that I
approach this assignment with no very
great confidence that moral philosophy
has an obvious and substantial con¬
tribution to make to such discussions as
these. I say this not because I am disposed
to doubt that the question of a just system
of public school finance constitutes a
moral issue — I am sure that it does — but •
rather because I do not perceive any
errors in the reasoning of the courts to
which the insights of moral philosophy
could offer a useful corrective. In other
words, just because these decisions seem
to me to be both legally and morally
correct, I don’t think they stand in any
special need of philosophical defense.

This is not to say, however, that some of
the implications of the Serrano decisions
may not raise questions — some of them
quite serious — that need attention on this
occasion. As my contribution to these
discussions, therefore, I will try to show
what the problematic aspects of these
decisions may be and how they arise, as I
think they do, precisely out of the effort to
secure a fuller justice for all our citizens in
the area of educational provision. In order
to do this I must first take up the right to
education itself and review two major
interpretations to which it has been sub¬
ject.

There is a prima facie conflict between
these interpretations which might be
thought to supply a philosophical basis for
opposing the Serrano conclusion; but I will
try to show that this is not the correct view
of the matter. At the same time, however,
an analysis of this apparent conflict
between ways of depriving the right to
education will cast light on what I have
called the problematic aspects of the
movement towards equalization of support
for public schooling which is now in
prospect.

Although we often think of rights as so
many different forms of freedom, this way
of thinking of them proves inappropriate
when the right to education is in question.

In this case as in others, to say that I have
a right is to imply that others have a duty;
but the character of the duty which
corresponds to my right is different in the
case of education from what it is in the
case of, say, property rights. The
possession of a property right entails that
others must not interfere in my use of the
land or buildings in which I have this
right: but it does not normally require
anything more than such non-interference
from other persons.

By contrast, a right to education that
required no more of anyone else than a
similar non-interference with my efforts to
provide an education for myself would not
have much meaning. It may be that when
we speak of cultural freedom we have in
mind a right of this limited kind, i.e., a
right to which there would correspond
merely a duty not to impose an alien
culture. But the right to education clearly
implies much more than this, if only
because it resides in the first instance in
very young children who are quite unable
to provide themselves with the education
they need and are not in fact even able to
claim that right. If the right to education is
to be meaningful, the duty which
corresponds to it must be a duty to make
resources available in behalf of the
education of the person possessing the
right. At least in the first stages of
education it will also comprise the duty of
making the judgments about the character
of the education that is to be provided and

to Education, Equality, and the State

By Frederick

Dr. Olafson is a Professor of Philosophy

to do so on the basis of an estimate of the
needs and interests of the child whose
education it is.

When we conceive the right to education
in this way, the next step in our analysis
must obviously be to identify the person or
persons to whom such a duty of providing
support for someone else’s education can
be plausibly attributed. One way of doing
this would be to say that this duty is per¬
fectly general in nature and that when a
child has a right to education the
corresponding duty is one that everyone or
at least all adult persons must
acknowledge. Presumably this is the view
that is implicit in such assertions of a
universal right to education as the one set
forth in the UNESCO Declaration of
Universal Human Rights; or at any rate it
seems fair to make this assumption since
that Declaration does not pursue the
question of where the duty corresponding
to this universal right resides and thereby
appears to imply that the duty is as
universal as the right.

It may be desirable, however, without
prejudice to whatever validity such claims
may prove to have, to give priority of
consideration to another way of in¬
terpreting the duty corresponding to the
right to education. I have in mind the view
which treats the parents of a child as
having the primary duty to provide an
education for that child. The logic of this
view is that parents are after all the
persons who have brought the child into
the world and therefore have a special
responsibility resting on the particular
relationship in which they stand to their
child to see to it that it receives not only

A. Olafson

at the University of California San Diego

side of the duty of the parents is not to
prejudge unfavorably the possibility that a
still wider basis for the right to education
may exist: and in fact the second in¬
terpretation of the right to education
which I will take up a little later is a
variant of that view.

In his famous essay On Liberty John
Stuart Mill makes a few passing ob¬
servations on education which are of
particular relevance here because they
seem to presuppose a view of the right to
education and the duty corresponding to it
that is very close to the one just described.
In this essay Mill is exploring the distinc¬
tion between the occasions on which it is
legitimate for a public authority to in¬
terfere in someone’s life in defense of a
wider interest and those occasions on
which such a person should be left un¬
disturbed, however destructive his con¬
duct may prove to be to his own interest.

Interestingly enough, although Mill has
often been accused of allowing too great a
scope to individual discretion, his treat¬
ment of the parent-child relationship can
hardly be faulted on these grounds and
may in fact strike present-day readers of
his essay as surprisingly harsh. He
suggests, for example, that in light of the
heavy responsibilities that parenthood
carries with it it may be a matter of
legitimate public concern to determine
whether particular individuals are really
qualified for the role of parent.

As regards education itself, Mill was
strongly convinced that children have a
right to education and that their parents
have a corresponding duty to provide that

HERE IS PROOF that although laws may not inevitably pass, time does. John
Anthony Serrano, above, was a primary school student when the suit was first
brought in his name. He will be college age very soon. Speaking in the KCET
television documentary, John Serrano wondered whether equality of educational
opportunity would really be achieved in time for his children.

the general care and up-bringing it
requires if it is to achieve maturity and
independence, but also the education that
will enable it to function competently in
the several areas of its lief-activity.

One reason not to neglect the basis of the
right to education in this special
relationship of parent to child is that by
contrast with the prior universal con¬
ception it enjoys quite general recognition
and may therefore provide an agreeed
upon starting point from which to begin
one’s inquiries into this whole matter. It
should of course be emphasized that to
approach the right to education from the

education for their children. At the same
time he is enough of a realist to know that
that duty is not always honored and
perhaps not always even acknowledged.
He accordingly lays down the principle
that when this duty is not honored by the
parent “the state ought to see it fulfilled at
the charge, as far as possible, of the
parent.”

Here we have an interesting pattern of
rights and duties in whmh a failure on the
part of a parent to fmfill his duty that
corresponds to the right to education of his
child properly calls forth a response from
the state that enforces the obligation of the

parent. The vital point for Mill is, of
course, that this is as far as the state
should normally go in matters of
education. If it were to undertake to
provide this education itself, the result
could only be a “contrivance for moulding
people to be exactly like one another” and
he is sure that this mould would be one
“that pleases the predominant power in
the government, whether it be a monarch,
a priesthood, an aristocracy, or the
majority of the existing generation” and
that it would establish “a despotism over
the mind leading by natural tendency to
one over the body”.

There is one other very significant
feature of Mill’s treatment of education
that must be noted. First, after confining
the role of state in matters of education
within such narrow limits, he adds that the
state may help “to pay the school fees of
the poorer classes of children and (defray)
the entire school expenses of those who
have no one else to pay for them.” In other
words, it is admissible and in some cir¬
cumstances even necessary that the state
should not merely enforce the duty of
parent to provide his child with an
education under a private-purchase
scheme but itself help to finance this
system of educational provision.

Second, as a means to enforcement of
the parent’s duty to support its child’s
education, the state may properly set
public examinations to determine whether
children are effectively acquiring the
knowledge with which their education
should provide them. Mill recognizes the
danger that such a system of examinations
might make it possible for the state to
exercise a decisive influence over the
whole nominally private system of
education; and he therefore stipulates that
these examinations should deal with
matters of “fact and positive science”
exclusively and should not deal with
“religion, politics or other disputed
topics”.

It may well seem that with these
qualifications Mill is really sanctioning a
role for the state within the area of
education that would inevitably exceed the
limits he was originally disposed to set.
Nevertheless, the inspiration for his un¬
derlying conviction that the state should
not become directly involved in what he
calls the provision of education still
commands interest. It is significant in this
connection that the case of the poor who
cannot provide an education for their
children comes into Mill’s account almost
parenthetically; and the reason, I think, is
clearly that Mill’s view takes as its
paradigm a quite different situation in life
and thus a quite different relationship to
the state. That is the situation of the
person who disposes of at least modest
resources that go beyond what is required
for the immediate necessities of life and
who as a result enjoys a measure — again
perhaps very slight — of independence in
the way he designs his own and his
family’s life. Such a person, who belongs
typically to the middle class, will ac¬
cordingly be in a position to conceive his
relationship to the various institutions
with which he is associated in a manner
that, instead of subsuming him entirely
under their tutelary influence and control,
allows him a role in determining what the
manner of functioning of these institutions
is to be.

He will also, or so Mill rather anxiously
hopes, wish to insist that under all cir¬
cumstances he should retain an area of
privacy and individuality in his life upon
which the influence of public authority and
of public opinion is not allowed to intrude.
For just these reasons he will not wish to
Continued on page 12

HUMANITIES NETWORK SPRING 1978 PAGE 5

The Serrano

Because of the political nature of the
Serrano decision and the legislative ac¬
tivity that follows from it, it is easy to lose
sight of the underlying values that inform
the decision itself. Like most Supreme
Court decisions, state or federal, the
Serrano decision is a philosophical piece of
writing which puts forward and defends
with reasons certain value judgments. My
remarks today will focus on some of these
values that I think are important, and
which, if taken seriously by the California
community, could have a strong influence
on the course of public education.

The first such value is the Justices’
assertion that education is a fundamental
human right. Let me quote several
passages randomly from the decision.

. . . The right to an education in our
public schools is a fundamental
interest which cannot be conditioned
on wealth. . . .

We . . . begin by examining the in¬
dispensable role which education
plays in the modern industrial state.
This role . . . has two significant
aspects: first, education is a major
determinant of ..an individual’s
chances for economic and social
success in our competitive society;
second, education is a unique in¬
fluence on a child’s development as
a citizen and his participation in
political and community life. . . .
Thus, education is the lifeline of both
the individual and society.

(Education) is a right which must be
made available to all on equal
terms.

. . . Today an education has become
the sine qua non of useful existence.

“I believe in the existence of a great,
immortal immutable principle of
natural law or natural ethics, — a
principle antecedent to all human
institutions, and incapable of being
abrogated by any ordinance of man .

. . which proves the absolute right to
an education of every human being
that comes into the world, and
which, of course, proves the
correlative duty of every govern¬
ment to see that the means of that
education are provided for all. . . .”
(Quoted approvingly from Horace
Mann; italics his.)

Presumably these assertions and others
like them are interpretations of that
section of the California Constitution
(Article IX, Section 1) which states that a
general diffusion of knowledge and in¬
telligence is essential to the preservation
of the rights and liberties of the people.
(Interestingly, the U.S. Constitution
contains no comparable statement, and in
1973 in the San Antonio School District v.
Rodriguez decision, the U.S. Supreme
Court held that education is not a con¬
stitutionally guaranteed right.) The
California Supreme Court’s contention
that education is a right to be enjoyed by
all equally is the fundamental
philosophical underpinning of the Serrano
decision.

But can something be a right which has
emerged so late in history? So far as I
know, no one spoke of education as a right
before the 19th century (which may ex¬
plain why it’s not in the 18th century U.S.
Constitution, but is in the late 19th century
California Constitution). Isn’t a fun¬

Decision — A Humanist's

By John P. Crossley, Jr.

This paper is a part of the information packet distributed by the Coalition
as background material for the use of speakers at community meetings on
• the Serrano decision.

damental right supposed to be something
that is locked into the essence of human
being from the beginning? On the con¬
trary, as I see it, rights emerge in human
history, and they emerge precisely at that
point of tension when the emerging con¬
sciousness of a right and the possibility of
its being maintained buck up against
forces that would deny it. Such venerable
rights as life, liberty and the pursuit of
happiness are in fact latecomers (18th
century) on the plane of history, and they
achieved expression at a time when ertain
human beings became conscious of both
their importance and their possibility of
being realized, and certain other human
beings sought to supress them. Con¬
sciousness of a right is the sine qua non of
there being such a “thing” as a right at all,
and historical conditions are the equally
necessary framework for the emergence
of a particular consciouness. It would have
been absurd, say, for a 19th century gold
prospector to stand up from the creek and
say, “I’m tired of this. I demand my right
to an education.”. Who would grant him
such a right? But it is not absurd for John
Serrano and all other children of the 20th
century to demand their right to an
education; they are conscious of such a
right, and historical conditions are such
that it can be granted.

No Change?

It seems to me that the Serrano
decision is indeed based on some rights,
but I very much doubt that the im¬
plementation of Serrano will result in
any greater rights to children. The
political forces within school districts,
the vested interests, never talk about
kids; how children will come in for the
rights I believe the decision is based on,
is very hazy.

Unless there is some restructuring of
the educational system itself in terms
of values that it might hold for
education, I don’t see much happening
in the way of improving the quality or
equality simply due to Serrano. There
will be a redistribution of money, but in
terms of what will permeate down to
the education of children, I’m very
sceptical. I don’t think it’s going to
change the school system.

— James Reusswig
Superintendent of Schools
Vallejo City Unified School District

Some people are worried, I think, that if
education is taken to be a fundamental
right comparable to life and liberty, then
anything necessary for successful living
could be deemed a right — things such as
transportation or housing or medical care.
I will not comment here on whether or i)
what sense such things are or might
become human rights except to say that
education is in some sense unique
alongside other necessities for successful
living. It is unique in that it is not only a
right but a duty. The history of so-called
natural law and natural rights is a single
history. While we cannot develop this point
here, I think it is true that fundamental
human rights correspond to fundamental
human obligations. We have an obligation
to develop our minds; consequently,
education is a right. Or, if you prefer,
education is a right; there is no right not to
become educated. As in the old argument
about liberty, there is no right not to be
free, and one cannot choose slavery

without becoming less than human.

If it’s true that education is a duty as
well as a right — or perhaps a duty and
therefore a right — it’s well to remind
ourselves that true duties are mostly
proscriptions, seldom prescriptions. We
have a duty not to steal, not to kill, and so
on but no duty to be moral heroes. In
education no one can say with any cer¬
tainty how extensively we are obligated to
develop our minds. We can say with more
certainty that we have an obligation not to
let our minds atrophy, not to neglect using
them to understand ourselves and our
place in the world. We can also say that we
have a duty not to prevent anyone, with
even the slightest obstacle, from
developing his or her mind to the extent he
or she desires and is capable. This is one
rationale behind not only public
elementary and secondary education, but
behind free public higher education as
well. We do not require young people to
attend school past age eighteen, but we do
not prevent people from developing their
minds through formal education at any
age.

The mention of compulsory education
brings me to one last point about education
as a right. Even if education were not a
fundamental right on philosophical
grounds — and I think it is — we have put it
into that category on pragmatic grounds
by requiring it of all children from six to
eighteen. Once education is required by
law, the right to be treated equally under
the law comes into force. While the right to
education and the right to equal protection
of the laws are initially two different
rights, mandatory education fuses them.

The second value in the Serrano decision
that I want to mention is fairness. What is
considered fair can run the range from, on
one extreme, a suum quique (to each his
due) based on any criterion of what is due
(e.g., wealth, race, sex, intelligence) to, on
the other extreme, absolute equality.
Where is Serrano on this range? I suggest
that its conception of fairness or justice is
somewhere in the middle.

On the one hand, it flatly rejects wealth
as a criterion for access to education, and
that rejection is, of course, the basis for
legislation such as AB 65 that tries to
restructure school financing on a non¬
wealth basis. In denying wealth as an
applicable criterion, Serrano stands in the
same tradition as the 1954 Supreme Court
decision in Brown v. Topeka Board of
Education which denied race as a relevant
factor. Presumably all such “social ac¬
cidents” as race, wealth, sex, religion,

Perspective

social class, and so on, are illegitimate
criteria for allocating education

On the other hand, however, Serrano
does not mandate equality of education,
but equality of opportunity for education.
The thrust is that no one, by dint of living
in a poor neighborhood, should be denied
a quality education. I think it’s important
to draw the distinction between equality of
education and equality of opportunity for
education, for Serrano might be in¬
terpreted in some quarters as some sort
of push for “leveling” or even mediocre
uniformity in education. That may ac¬
tually occur as the result of ensuing
legislation, but that is not the intention of
Serrano. The clearest way to implement
Serrano would be to make available to all
school districts the same amount of money
per child now available to the wealthiest
school districts. From the base point, the
sky would be the limit on how “different”
schools could be from one another.

Serrano says unfairness is structured
into the present system of school finance
and automatically produces inequality of
opportunity. The thrust is toward
equalization of opportunity, but not
necessarily for the sake of equality of
education. Equality of opportunity can
also be for the sake of an educational
meritocracy in which each student has his
or her education tailored for his or her own
particular abilities and interests. Just as
in business anti-trust laws can be used as a
“socialistic” lever to take business out of
the hands of private corporations, or as a
tool (and this was the original intent of the
legislation) to insure free competition
among private corporations; so in
education equality of opportunity can be
used to destroy incentives and produce
uniform mediocrity, or it can be used to
enliven education and make of every
classroom an opportunity for individual
achievement. Serrano favors the latter
alternative; justice is not the opposite of
freedom, but its guarantor.

Let my say just a word about a third
“value” in Serrano which is not there. This
is the value of state control, as opposed to
district control, of education. We all know
the adage, “Whoever pays the piper calls
the tune.” While Serrano does not man¬
date state control of school finance, it
probably moves in that direction. Does
state control of school finance imply state
control of education? Let me say three
things about that. First, Serrano does not
think so. It is interested in fair educational
opportunity based on the right to
education, not in the control of education.
Second, we have gained a good deal of
experience recently in this country in
permitting local control within national
guidelines. In the field of civil rights, for
example, racial segregation is outlawed
nationally, yet that has not seemed to lead
to federal intervention in state matters
beyond the laws themselves. In other
words, it is possible for whoever pays the
piper to designate certain tunes that can’t
be played, but beyond that to leave it up to
the locals to call the tunes. Third, a
measure of state control is not necessarily
bad. We already have a good deal of it in
California, for one.thing, but for another, it
would be virtually impossible for local
school districts to tackle certain issue,
among them, fair school finance.

Finally, I want to say something about
Continued on page 13

PAGE' 6 HUMANITIES NETWORK SPRING 1978

Questions and Answers about the Serrano Decision 8

In August. 1968, the Serrano v. Priest case first came to court. A suit was filed by John Serrano, a
parent, on behalf of his son andiother California school pupils against the state of California, which was
represented by Ivy Baker Priest, State Treasurer at that time. Serrano charged that California’s school
finance system was unfair and unconstitutional, because some school districts could afford to, and did,
spend many times the amount per student that other districts spent. After a series of appeals, the
California Supreme Court on December 30, 1976, issued its decision that the present system was
indeed unfair and unconstitutional.

The Serrano decision requires fundamental changes in the way education is financed in California,
but it does not say where to get the money, how much is needed, or how it should be spent. These
decisions are still to be made by the citizens of the state.

1

Why is the way we now support our
schools in California unconstitutional?

The California Supreme Court has found
that our present manner of supporting public
education is in violation with that part of the
California Constitution which guarantees
equal protection under the law.

The Court has declared that children in
California do not have an equal opportunity
for a good education, because spending for
education under the present system is neces¬
sarily related to the differences in wealth
among school districts.

2 How does the present system violate equal
protection under the law?

More than half of the school costs are
paid with local property tax monies on the
basis of the taxable wealth, or assessed valua¬
tion, of each school district. Property values—
a school district’s “wealth”— vary widely
from district to district. Some districts have
very valuable property, such as a shopping
center or a steel mill, and few children live in
those areas. These are called “rich” districts.
Other districts have many children to educate
and low property values. These are called
“poor” districts.

Rich districts can raise money for chil¬
dren’s education much more easily than poor
districts. The same rate of taxation on prop¬
erty brings in more tax dollars in rich districts
than it does in poor ones. This difference in
taxable wealth makes some districts able to
provide a better education at a lower tax rate
than other districts can.

q What does equal opportunity mean?

The Court has said that in order to
provide equal opportunity, the amount of
money available for education must depend
on factors other than the wealth of school
districts. This is called “fiscal neutrality.”
Rich and poor districts must have the same
financial ability to Serve the educational needs
of students. This means that equal tax rates
must yield equal dollars per student, regard¬
less of a district’s wealth.

4 Since the funding of many services
depends on property taxes on the same
basis as the funding for education, what is
special about education?

The Court has said that education is a
“fundamental interest.” This means that it is
directly related to individual rights and liber¬
ties that the Constitution protects and guaran¬
tees.

5 Education in California uses S4 billion
from property taxes. Can it legally con¬
tinue to do this?

Yes, as long as the money is used accord¬
ing to the requirements of fiscal neutrality.

6 Will schools have to spend the same
amount for the education of all children?

No. Different amounts can be spent as
long as they relate to factors other than
wealth. The trial Court has said that differ¬
ences based on wealth may not exceed $100
per student, and that this equalization must be
achieved by September, 1980. Additional fun¬
ding for students with special educational needs
or for special programs will be permitted.

7 Since a district is “rich” or “poor” on the
basis of its assessed valuation, poor people
can live in rich districts and vice versa.
Will the Serrano decision make the tax
system fair in terms of people’s abilities to
pay?

No. The Serrano case was not a general
search for “tax equity.” Its only purpose was
to determine if the state’s school financing
system was denying equal protection of the
laws by denying equal educational oppor¬
tunity. The Court said it is the Legislature’s
responsibility to deal with tax equity in
general.

Who will be responsible for changing the
present system of funding public educa¬
tion?

The Legislature is responsible for passing
bills, which then must be signed by the
Governor to become law. Citizens who have
suggestions for changing the system should
submit their suggestions to their elected state
representatives.

If the Legislature does not change the
present system for funding public education
by 1 980, the Court has the authority to act on
the matter.

9 What kinds of options will the Legislature
have?

The Court has mentioned several possible
solutions:

o Establishing a statewide property tax to
pay all educational costs

o Consolidating school districts from 1,042
to 500, with boundaries changed to en¬
sure equal wealth among them

o Changing taxing practices so that commer¬
cial and industrial properties pay taxes
directly to the state for educational pur¬
poses

o Equalizing taxing ability among districts
so that all are guaranteed the same result
in dollars for the same tax rate, regardless
of their local wealth

o Adopting additional fiscally neutral sys¬
tems or combinations of systems

Other solutions will undoubtedly be pro¬
posed by the Governor and the legislators. We
can expect many different ideas on how to
carry out the Serrano decision during the
coming months.

WDoes the decision guarantee that all chil¬
dren will get a good education?

No. The decision means only that spend¬
ing cannot be based on a school district’s
wealth. The Legislature will have to decide
how much to spend on education and give
guidance regarding the quality of educational
programs. It will be up to the citizens of each
local school district to ensure that the educa¬
tional programs in their district meet the
needs of their community.

Written in everyday language
for readers unfamiliar with the
terminology of school finance,
this brochure is available in
English, Spanish, Tagalog
and Chinese.

Single copies are free with a
stamped, self-addressed en¬
velope; quantity orders will
be filled for the cost of the
postage.

Write for information on
these and other materials
to the California Coalition
for Fair School Finance;
648 Menlo Ave., Suite 5,
Menlo Park, CA 94025.

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HUMANITIES NETWORK SPRING 1978 PAGE 7

CCHPP Announces New Grant Categories

As a result of a year-long review and
assessment of its program, the CCHPP
has announced the creation of several new
categories of grants. The new categories
are designed to meet needs uncovered in
both the public and academic sectors for
support of public activities in the
humanities which are currently excluded
from the state grants program.

Although the extensive review process
provided very strong support for the
continuation of a major emphasis on the
interaction of the humanities with Public
policy concerns, specific additional areas
were also identified in which modest
funding might encourage significant steps
to be taken toward, the overall program
aim of providing public access to and
involvement with the humanities. The new
categories seek to promote high quality
scholarly activity in areas of broad social
concern, expand the availability of the
resources of the humanities to oc¬
cupational and professional groups,
support the exploration and presentation
of local and cultural histories, and assist
the development of other creative ap¬
proaches to the public presentation of the
humanities.

The four new categories Are:

1. MULTI-DISCIPLINARY SEMINARS

These projects are designed to en¬
courage scholars from a wide variety of
disciplines in the humanities to address in
a sustained fashion questions of broad and
substantial social concern. Examples of
such questions are the use of knowledge in
a technological society, the changing
meaning of progress, the transformation
of family life, new concepts of work, the
future of a multi-ethnic culture, and the
literacy crisis. Seminars should produce a
paper or set of papers as a result. The
development of materials which might be
distributed to the general public is en¬
couraged.

Although the most probable sponsors of
projcts within this category are academic
institutions or departments, other
organizations or institutes with strong
resources in the humanities are also

eligible. Projects will typically involve
academic seminars; research or
publications could not be the primary
emphasis. However, research integrally
related to the general project and
publication to the degree that materials
might have wide public appeal, may be
included.

2. PROGRAMS FOR THE OC¬
CUPATIONS

Projects in this category will typically
involve a one to two week session which
• brings together such groups as labor
leaders, business executives, law en¬
forcement officials, media represen¬
tatives, members of the medical
profession, or clerical workers to examine
the historical backgrounds or topics of
current interest to their occupations. The
“occupational group” designation in¬
cludes all categories of workers and
groups whose members share a common
professional orientation; for example, a
group of mill workers interested in a series
of discussions on the history and literature
of wood products or a group of lawyers
interested in a seminar on the philosophy
of justice.

This category was primarily adopted to
reach constituencies which do not have
direct access to the humanities and to
explore how the humanities might be more
directly related to their needs. Programs
should focus on topics of interest to the
occupational group and which lend
themselves to treatment by the
humanities. Examples are the history of
the occupation, current ethical-social
dilemmas faced by it, future develop¬
ments which might be anticipated, and the
place of the occupation in the general
pattern of social activity.

3. LOCAL AND CULTURAL HISTORY

This program will support projects

which explore the historical background of
communities in California and present to
the public, information about its localities,
regions, people, and cultures. Although
projects should have a primarily historical
emphasis, they may also relate the study

Continued from page 1

We are pleased to announce in this issue
of Humanities Network the resutls of this
intensive self-examination and
assessment of the broad needs of the
humanities in California. Chiefly the
results are three: (1) There is strong
support for continued emphasis on the
public policy focus of the state program.
Ninety one percent of those responding to
our questionnaire stated that the public
policy focus should be given either first or
very high priority in the state program.
(2) The program should accommodate the
need for more intensive and diverse
scholarly involvement. (3) New forms of
programs should be sought to reach public
constituencies which currently have
limited involvement with the state
program.

Accordingly, new grant categories
adopted for the 1978-79 CCHPP program
have been designed to reflect these con¬
clusions. First, the majority of funding (at
least 75 percent) will remain, in keeping
with the clear endorsement by all groups,
with the humanities-public policy focus
under our current guidelines. Thus the
Council will continue to fund projects on
such policy, questions as the Serrano
decision described in this issue of our
newsletter.

Secondly, one new category,
“Multidisciplinary Seminars,” has been
adopted to encourage high quality

scholarly work in areas which are of broad
public concern but not necessarily matters
of current public policy.

Thirdly, two new categories, “Programs
for the Occupations” and “Local and
Cultural History,” have been created to
provide assistance to groups outside the
scholarly community which have strong
interests in the humanities but whose
needs may lie outside the public policy
arena.

Finally, the Council has adopted a
category to allow the exploration of
creative ideas for public humanities
programs in a few selected experimental
areas under the title of “Innovative
Projects in Public Humanities
Programs.” Further descriptions of these
new categories on page 7 of this issue. If
you have a particular project in mind,
please write the Council office for the new
guidelines.

We wish to thank all of those who par¬
ticipated in our review process and
assisted us in the development of these
new categories. We hope that this initial
determination of new funding priorities
represents a responsive and responsible
approach to the development of the public
mission of the humanities — a mission
which in our view includes both scholarly
integrity and broad citizen access.

— Martin N. Chamberlain

of the past to present and future social
developments.

Projects must relate to the theme, “The
Pursuit of Community in California,”
exploring the chosen subject matter as an
integral part of California’s social history.
Projects may focus on a particular group
or region, but it should seek to broaden the
scope beyond that of a particular
viewpoint, placing the topic in the context
of the complex multi-ethnic multi-cultural
history of California, while maintaining an
objective balance.

All projects beyond the planning phase
will be funded on a “challenge match”
basis only, requiring the sponsor to raise
funds from an additional outside source.
Research may be incorporated as part of a
project, but research costs should not
exceed 50 percent of total project costs.
This portion of the project must include
active participation by trained historians
and / or other scholars in the humanities.

Projects must include some form of
public presentation (exhibit, film, lecture,
radio program, etc.). Grants will not
normally be made for on-going projects,
general institution support, permanent
staffing, or research alone, although the
Council will consider special cir¬
cumstances under which this limitation
might be waived. If it is a film project,
there should be evidence of a solid
knowledge of film techniques and
procedures, and a realistic, detailed
statement of expected costs should be
submitted with the proposal. First
deadline for Local and Cultural History
proposals is April 15, 1978.

4. INNOVATIVE PUBLIC HUMANI¬
TIES PROJECTS

This category is designed to fund only

those proposals which demonstrate in¬
novative ways of relating the humanities
to the public through (1) new approaches
to public policy projects, (2) methods of
reaching currently underserved con¬
stituencies, (3) creative uses of the media,
(4) exploratory scholarly work, or (5) new
formats for making the content of the
humanities available to the general
public. Such projects must be truly in¬
novative and demonstrate the potential for
serving as models for other public
humanities projects which might be
funded by the Council.

All such projects will require an initial
indication of interest by the Council, which
would encourage through staff in¬
volvement the development of a full
proposal. Proposals should describe how
the project will be complementary to other-
aspects of the CCHPP state program.

In addition, a fifth grant category is
under development which would create a
program to bring scholars in the
humanities into high school classrooms. At
this point only planning grants to school
districts are under consideration for the
further exploration of the potential
operation of such programs.

Further information on all of the new
categories and copies of the new
guidelines are available from the Council
offices. Prospective applicants should note
that “short form” descriptions of proposed
projects must be submitted for Council
approval before a final proposal will be
accepted. The deadline for the first round
of applications in all categories is April 30,
except Local and Cultural History. Final
proposals must be in (not postmarked) the
main Council office in San Francisco by
that date.

New Members Join Council

Five new members have taken seats on
the Humanities Council in the last few
months. They include David Crippens,
Vice President for Educational Services of
KCET-TV in Los Angeles; Francisca
Flores, Executive Director of the Chicana
Service Action Center, Inc., also in Los
Angeles; Alistair McCrone, President of
Humboldt State College, Eureka; Robert
K. Kanagawa, President of the Kanagawa
Citrus Company in Sanger, Fresno
County; and Richard Wasserstrom,
Professor of Law and Philosophy at
U.C.L.A.

Crippens is a graduate of Antioch
College in Yellow Springs, Ohio, and holds
an advanced degree from San Diego State
University. He was a Peace Corps Trainer
for Nigeria, Sierra Leone, and Jamaica
before beginning his career in public
television at KPBS-TV in San Diego. From
1971 to 1973 he was staff producer, writer
and newsperson at WQED in Pittsburgh,
Pennsylvania, and served as executive
producer of the BLACK HORIZONS
series. He has received a number of
awards, including one from the California
Assembly Legislative Committee for work
in the community and communications
field. He is a member of the President’s
Advisory Committee of the Los Angeles
City College, and the minority task force of
the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

Flores has held a long series of com¬
munity service positions dating from 1958.
She is a specialist in public affairs, non¬
partisan politics, Mexican-American
Status in the United States, and Chicana
Women in Employment, has served as a
columnist on “Comercio” and “Mas
Grafica,” and as Editor of “Carta
Editorial” and “Regeneracion.” She has
been a resource participant and panelist at
conferences and classes in Chicano studies

at Stanford, San Diego State University,
University of Southern California,
U.C.L.A. and San Francisco State
University, as well as in Washington,
Albuquergue, Houston, Phoenix and
elsewhere. Among her recent affiliations
are the California Manpower Training
Association, the Chicana Rights Task
Force, the City of Los Angeles Bicen¬
tennial Committee to Honor Women, and
the Board of Directors of the Los Angeles
Family Service Association.

Dr. McCrone came to Humboldt State
from The University of the Pacific in
Stockton, where he was academic vice
president and acting president, as well as
Professor of Geology. He holds degrees in
geology from the University of Saskat¬
chewan, the University of Nebraska, and
the University of Kansas. He is a Fellow of
the Geological Society of America and the
American Association for Advancement of
Science and has participated in research
projects sponsored by the National
Science Foundation, the U.S. Public
Health Service, and Sigma Xi, an
honorary scientific organization. He has
conducted field studies in several parts of
Canada and the Hudson River Estuary and
Long Island Sound, and before coming to
California was chairman of the Geology
Department and Associate Dean at New
York University.

Kanagawa owns and operates the
Sanger Nursery, a retail store of nursery
and hardware products in Sanger, is a
Past President of the Sanger Japanese
American Citizens League and the Sanger
Citrus Association. He is also on the Board
of St. Agnes Hospital and a past board
member of the Valley Children’s Hospital,
a former trustee of Sanger Unified School

Continued on page 10

PAGE 8 HUMANITIES NETWORK SPRING 1978

Grants Awarded, October 1977

THE ATHLETE AND THE EMERGENCE OF MODERN
SPIRIT

Expermental seminar to plan future major conference
Sponsor: Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies,
University of California, Los Angeles

Sub-titled “The Social Impact of Sports in the Middle Ages and
the Renaissance,” the seminar seeks to study the tight links
between sports and social, political, psychological en¬
vironments in early times, and trace their parallels into the
present, bringing together scholars foom a diversity of
backgrounds to plan a three-day conference which will use the
XXII Olympiad as a point of reference for contemporary
problems. Materials prepared for and issuing from the con¬
ference will result in a publication and a television program.

THE GREAT LITERACY CRISIS

One-day invitational conference workshop for scholars,
decision-makers and public representatives
Sponsor: San Diego State University
The conference will bring together humanist scholars,
representatives of citizen groups, regional educational agen¬
cies, and public and private educational institutions to explore
whether there is a literacy crisis and how best to treat it. Par¬
ticipants will discuss the return to basics movement, the role
and value of standardized testing, the influence of the media in
developing public opinion, and the use of data and public opinion
in decision-making. A 30-minute television documentary will
focus on major presentations and conclusions, and proceedings
will be published.

ORANGE COUNTY POLITICAL CAMPAIGN REFORM:
WHAT SHOULD BE DONE?

Four 1 Vi-hour sessions of advocate-adversary debate with a
moderator, expert witnesses and live audience
Sponsor: Santa Ana College, Coro Foundation, City of Santa
Ana

Community observers will act as a jury to vote at the end of
each session on the topic of the meeting. These will include: 1)
Should Orange County establish a Fair Campaign Practises
Commission? 2) Should an ordinance be established prohibiting
corporations and labor unions from contributing to county level
campaigns? 3) Should an ordinance be passed limiting the
amounts which an organization or individual may contribute to
a county campaign ? 4) Should Orange County provide public
funds to finance county level campaigns? Programs will be
video-taped.

PRISON CONSTRUCTION IN CALIFORNIA — TO BUILD OR
NOT TO BUILD

Six one-day forums in locations throughout the state
Sponsor: Unitarian Universalist Service Committee; Com¬
mittee Against More Prisons; Coalition for Alternatives to
Prison

Forums will involve a broad segment of state population, in¬
cluding legislators, correctional administrators, educators,
members of the governmor’s staff, humanist scholars and the
public in addressing whether there is a need for the construction
of more state prisons in California and who should make this
decision; what value imprisonment has as a means of social
control and how alternatives to imprisonment for this purpose
would affect the quality of life in the state.

COSTS AND BENEFITS OF RAPID GROWTH IN RURAL
AREAS

One-day conference and workshop
Sponsor: Conservation Training Network, San Francisco
The conference will analyze the impact of development on
Sierra Nevada archaeological sites, both historic and pre¬
historic, and seek alternatives for the preservation or study of
such sites. Participants will enumerate other concerns brought
on by rapid growth and look for solutions in small groups based
on similar interests. Promising ideas for practical approaches
may lead to future meetings.

MIGRANT ALIEN WORKER CONFERENCE

Two- day conference with four sessions of panels followed by

small group discussions

Sponsor: Imperial Valley Campus, San Diego State
University

The conference will consider the rights of migrant alien workers
to such benefits as education, housing, legal services in the host
country, and the extent of that country’s obligation to adapt its
institutions to serve migrant alien workers, as well as the socio¬
economic impact caused by these workers in both host and
native countries. Scholars in the humanities will provide a
historical base for the discussion and clarify the philosophical
and social values which underlie the policy alternatives.

COUNTER-CULTURES AND COMMUNITY LIFE: CON¬
TRIBUTIONS AND CONTROVERSIES
Week-long series of panels and workshops culminating in a
public conference

Sponsor: American Studies Program, San Diego State
University

Participants will discuss the relationship of minority sub¬
cultures to the mainstream community in San Diego and
California generally, focussing on women, youth, blacks,
Mexican-Americans, homosexuals and beach people.
Representatives of these groups will explore with scholars and
public policy-makers the sources of friction between those who
challenge the assumed norms of the community and those
responsible for public policy in education, law enforcement, use
of tax money, etc. They will also look at the contributions
minorities make. The project is part of an extended studies
course for SDSU students.

PUBLIC POLICY ISSUES AND DISTRIBUTIVE JUSTICE:

IMPLICATIONS FOR COMMUNITY

Three symposia featuring panels and audience dialogue

Sponsor: School of Social and Behavioral Sciences, CSU Long
Beach

Topics to be discussed are: 1) Public Policy Issues of
Distributive Justice: an overview; 2) Public Finance: Should
the financing of all public services be equalized in the manner
called for by the Serrano v. Priest decision? 3) Affirmative
Action: How can a policy of “equal opportunity” be defined and
implemented in the face of conflicting claims between the
“merit principle,” ethnic diversity, and a heritage of racial and
sexual injustice? 4) Social Welfare Reform: How can this ystem
be changed to better promote distributive justice? 5) School
Integration: How can we define a just resolution of the growing
problem of racial isolation in the public schools? 6) Illegal
Immigration: how can it be controlled in a non-discriminatory
and just manner?

WHITHER LOCKE?

Sixty-minute color videotape documentary for use on public
television

Sponsor: Chinese Historical Society of America

The documentary will typify the dilemmas public policy
makers face in charting the future of culturally and historically
significant communities, using as a case study the tiny Delta
community, which was built and is still largely inhabited by
Chinese. Scholars in the humanities will analyze the value
considerations underlying proposals to preserve and / or
develop the town. The film will also question how and by whom
the planning decisions should be made that will determine
whether or not the town is to be preserved. The issues of
tourism, commercialization and ethnic identity will be explored
together with the probable impact of proposed changes on the
townspeople and the sense of community.

RELIGIOUS VALUES AND THE AFFAIRS OF STATE
Seven bi-weekly evening sessions with various formats, all
including dialogue.

Sponsor: Church for the Fellowship of All Peoples, San
Francisco

On the general theme of the relationship between religion and
day-to-day policy formation and implementation in the public
sector, the meetings will consider: 1) Religious values and the
affairs of state; 2) Religious perspectives on capital punish¬
ment; 3) Religious and political understanding of aging;
4)Brainwashing or conversion: religion freedom and cultism in
America; 5) Teaching morality in the classroom; 6) The
political personality, decision making and personal faith; 7)
Religious values and public policy. Participants will discuss
such issues and whether the state has the right to take life, what
medical model the state should use in dealing with the aged, and
what the state’s responsibilities are regarding “moral in¬
struction.”

COMMUNITIES WITHIN COMMUNITIES
Three video-taped programs for broadcast on public television
Sponsor: University of California, Irvine
Town hall discussions, video-taped on location, will include
policy makers, humanists and community residents addressing
the mutual concerns of three groups in Orange County: 1) the
undocumentaed Mexican workers; 2)the Vietnamese refugee
community; 3) the Chicano family structure. Some identified
issues are; 1) whether bilingual education should be mandated
and suported by the state; 2) whether undocumented workers
should be entitled to social services offered to resident aliens; 3)
whether it is the responsibility of the state to assist ethnically
diverse communities in the preservation of their cultural
heritage.

"Angel" by Linda Scott from a brochure of the Far West Institute

WATTS: BUSINESS CRISIS OF THE COMMUNITY
Three-part documentary film, each segment to be presented at
a public forum for a live TV audience that includes humanists
and other panelists; forums also to be filmed to make a package
for community group meetings.

Sponsor: Brotherhood Crusade, Los Angeles
The project will bring together humanists, policy makers,
practitioners and the public to analyze the community’s
economic problems and public policies regarding commercial
development. Topics will include: 1) Should government give
increased tax incentives to businesses and investors in Watts?
2) Should the setting of business insurance rates based on the
physical location of businesses be disallowed and / or should
business insurance rates be financed or subsidized by the state
in economically oppressed areas? 3) What should the role of the
community and the government be in upgrading the quality of
life in Watts?

CALIFORNIA PRIMARY ELECTION COVERAGE
Half-hour documentary; 12 five-minute reports; statewide call-
in program; six reports on candidates’ campaign strategies
Sponsor: Capital News Bureau (KVIE & KQED), Sacramento
The half-hour documentary will deal with the Jarvis-Gann
Property Tax Initiative, Proposition 13 on the June 6 primary
ballot; five-minute reports will cover all other propositions;
separate reports will cover the campaign strategy and can¬
didate image building. Humanists and journalists will answer
questions about the ballot propositions during the call-in
program. The entire series will be available to all public
broadcasting stations in the state.

COMMUNITY-BASED ALTERNATIVES TO IN¬
CARCERATION IN CALIFORNIA

Three day-long conferences in Marin County, San Francisco and
San Jose with prepared panel presentations followed by
discussion groups ,,

Sponsor: Community as the Alternative to Prison, Lagunitas
Conferences will bring together criminal justice professionals,
ex-convicts, political officials, humanist scholars and the public
to consider such questions as 1) What are the value issues and
conflicts raised by the concept of a community-based alter¬
native to incarceration? 2) What can and should we mean by
“community” and can it be fostered by an alternative criminal
justice program? 3) Are there historical and cross-cultural
examples of community-based alternatives that provide lessons
applicable to the current issue? 4) How, if at all, do community
alternatives articulate with recent movements toward local
autonomy, decentralization, and neighborhood improvement?

THE CONTROVERSY OVER LIVESTOCK GRAZING ON
PUBLIC LANDS IN MODOC COUNTY
Twenty-seven minute documentary film
Sponsor: Modoc County Chamber of Commerce
The film will concentrate on a single parcel of publicland, the
Cowhead Massacre grazing district, administered by the
Bureau of Land Management and leased to individual ranchers
for livestock use, as a symbol of the controversy between en¬
vironmentalists, recreationists, and families and communities
whose economy depends on the livestock industry and on the use
of government owned land for grazing. It will explore attitudes
toward the family farm and the small agricultural unit vs. the
futher commercialization of agriculture and concentration of
land ownership. Finally it will look at the political processes and
sources of power in rural America, again by analyzing these
issues in a small geographic area.

HUMANITIES NETWORK SPRING 1978 PAGE 9

October 1977, January 1978

"Angel" by Linda Scott from a brochure of the Far West Institute

WATTS: BUSINESS CRISIS OF THE COMMUNITY
Three-part documentary film, each segment to be presented at
a public forum for a live TV audience that includes humanists
and other panelists ; forums also to be filmed to make a package
for community group meetings.

Sponsor: Brotherhood Crusade, Los Angeles
The project will bring together humanists, policy makers,
practitioners and the public to analyze the community’s
economic problems and public policies regarding commercial
development. Topics will include: 1) Should government give
increased tax incentives to businesses and investors in Watts?
2) Should the setting of business insurance rates based on the
physical location of businesses be disallowed and / or should
business insurance rates be financed or subsidized by the state
in economically oppressed areas? 3) What should the role of the
community and the government be in upgrading the quality of
life in Watts?

CALIFORNIA PRIMARY ELECTION COVERAGE
Half-hour documentary; 12 five-minute reports; statewide call-
in program; six reports on candidates’ campaign strategies

Sponsor: Capital News Bureau (KVIE & KQED), Sacramento
The half-hour documentary will deal with the Jarvis-Gann
Property Tax Initiative, Proposition 13 on the June 6 primary
ballot; five-minute reports will cover all other propositions;
separate reports will cover the campaign strategy and can¬
didate image building. Humanists and journalists will answer
questions about the ballot propositions during the call-in
program. The entire series will be available to all public
broadcasting stations in the state.

COMMUNITY-BASED ALTERNATIVES TO IN¬
CARCERATION IN CALIFORNIA

Three day-long conferences in Marin County, San Francisco and
San Jose with prepared panel presentations followed by
discussion groups

Sponsor: Community as the Alternative to Prison, Lagunitas
Conferences will bring together criminal justice professionals,
ex-convicts, political officials, humanist scholars and the public
to consider such questions as 1) What are the value issues and
conflicts raised by the concept of a community-based alter¬
native to incarceration? 2) What can and should we mean by
“community” and can it be fostered by an alternative criminal
justice program? 3) Are there historical and cross-cultural
examples of community-based alternatives that provide lessons
applicable to the current issue? 4) How, if at all, do community
alternatives articulate with recent movements toward local
autonomy, decentralization, and neighborhood improvement?

THE CONTROVERSY OVER LIVESTOCK GRAZING ON
PUBLIC LANDS IN MODOC COUNTY
Twenty-seven minute documentary film
Sponsor: Modoc County Chamber of Commerce
The film will concentrate on a single parcel of publicland, the
Cowhead Massacre grazing district, administered by the
Bureau of Land Management and leased to individual ranchers
for livestock use, as a symbol of the controversy between en¬
vironmentalists, recreationists, and families and communities
whose economy depends on the livestock industry and on the use
of government owned land for grazing. It will explore attitudes
toward the family farm and the small agricultural unit vs. the
futher commercialization of agriculture and concentration of
land ownership. Finally it will look at the political processes and
sources of power in rural America, again by analyzing these
issues in a small geographic area.

INDIAN TREATY RIGHTS AND SOVEREIGNTY: A LEGACY
IN PERPETUITY

Two-day public forum with specialists as presenters and lay
people as respondents

Sponsor: Department of American Indian Studies / North
American Indian Student Alliance, San Diego State University
Participants will address the following major questions: 1) Are
issues of sovereignty applicable to all Indians (invoking the
constitution) or are they only applicable to tribes with extant
Federal Treaties? 2) Does a traditional pattern of land use or
occupancy have evidence from oral history and custom that
supports a legal stance on aboriginal rights? 3) Does the legal
principle of eminent domain impact on tribal control of water,
mineral and energy resources, and hunting and fishing rights?
4) Can individual Indians find recourse in litigation over con¬
flicts concerning access, zoning, leasehold or ownership issues
contrary to the will of the tribe? Scholars presenting per¬
spectives will be drawn from history, anthropology, literature,
political science and American Indian studies.

THE STRUCTURE OF THE LABOR FORCE IN THE SOUTH¬
WEST

Two-day conference with 16 individual sessions, two running
simultaneously. Format will be presentation of papers with
audience commentary or workshop-discussion; films, book
exhibits, banquet speakers

Sponsor: Institute of Industrial Relations, University of
California, Berkeley

Historians and labor activists will address issues of mutual
concern from their differing perspectives. Session topics will
include: ethnic groups in the labor force, trade union minority
leadership, the role of the Central Labor Council in California,
effects of technological change on the labor structure, the role of
retirees in the labor movement, the changing role of women in
the labor movement.

THE POLITICS OF PRESERVATION
Two-day conference
Sponsor: Pitzer College, Claremont
Three panels will address the following topics : 1) The politics of
preservation from formulation to implementation (at the
federal, state and local levels) ; 2) the philosophy and aesthetics
of preservation; 3) the history and future of preservation in
Claremont. They will explore how an essentially historic and
aesthetic concern such as historical preservation can be
translated into public policy, and whether the breakdown of a
community into two separate camps, one future and develop¬
ment oriented and another past and preservation oriented, can
be avoided. The conference marks the acquisition by the college
of the historic Zetterburg House, built in 1907, which has been
moved to the campus for repair and restoration.

THE ROLE OF CULTURAL HERITAGE AND PUBLIC
POLICY: PAN ASIAN SEARCH

Four one-day conferences in panel discussion-workshop format
Sponsor : Union of Pan Asian Communities of San Diego
County, Inc.

Each conference will examine the effects of public policy on Pan
Asian groups and the state at large in a specific area: 1)
Education: policies affecting implementation of multi-cultural
and bilingual education programs. 2) Affirmative action / equal
opportunity: policies affecting the numerical goals of af¬
firmative action programs and classification of Pan Asians. 3)
Immigration: differential policies for citizens versus per¬
manent resident aliens, assistance to immigrants. 4) Human
services: policies affecting the allocation and delivery of ser¬
vices.

HOSPICE, PUBLIC POLICY AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF
COMMUNITY

Three two-hour, video-taped workshops, one in each of three
counties (Ventura, Santa Barbara, San Luis Obispo)

Sponsor: Tri-County Commission for Senior Citizens, Area
Agency on Aging

The three sessions are designed to integrate a variety of
disciplines for a communal approach to Hospice counseling and
work toward creation of an extended family or community
support for terminally ill persons and their families. The topics
are: 1) Death, dying and public policies: a socio-cultural in¬
vestigation; 2) Hospice and public policy: an inquiry into
legislative and community development issues; 3) Hospice and
volunteerism: revitalizing the sense of community in the tri¬
counties.

VOLUNTARISM AND PUBLIC POLICY

One-day conference with presented papers, panels and

workshops

Sponsor: Los Angeles Section, National Council of Jewish
Women

Among the topics treated will be .the development and role of
voluntarism in this country from the past to the present, the
public image of the volunteer, and various proposals to
recognize volunteer service. The conference will consider the
possibility of community consensus regarding the volunteer
experience and the implications of developing a public policy
which would encourage voluntarism.

SISKIYOU AWARENESS CONFERENCE
Two-Day Public Information workshop / conference
Sponsor: College of the Siskiyous, Weed
The conference will focus on laws relating to water: whether it
should be considered a public resource, how far and by whom its
sources, utilization and development should be regulated. Three
workshop sessions will deal with: 1) Water laws and legal
aspects of water utilization; 2) Exporting water — its im¬
plications; 3) Ground Water Exploitation. Humanist scholars
will interact with state and federal decision makers, technical
experts and the public in assessing the increasing pressures on
controllers of local water supplies, and the relationship of water
resources to the quality of life.

CIVIL LIBERTIES RADIO PROJECT

Series of hour-long radio documentaries followed by audience
response in “talk show" format
Sponsor: Pacifica Radio — KPFA; ACLU Foundation of
Northern California

Three documentary radio productions will each explore all sides
of a current policy question involving clashes over civil liberties
principles, to provide the audience with an exposition of the
issue, legislation proposed to alter it, a humanistic analysis of
the historical, ethical and philosophical aspects of the issue and
a treatment of how it divides the community. Tentatively
selected issues include: 1. California conservatorship laws,
“deprogramming” and religious freedom; 2. Regulation and
control of lobbying; 3. Free speech for extremist groups. Tapes
will be offered for national distribution to educational broad¬
casting stations and academic institutions.

PUERTO RICANS — A THIRD WORLD MINORITY IN
CALIFORNIA

One-day symposium with panel discussions, workshops;
plenary session for community comment
Sponsor: Puerto Rican Task Force, Inglewood
The forum is planned to initiate dialogue and open channels of
communication focusing on education and employment needs of
Puerto Ricans in California as a distinct ethnic group. Among
the education issues will be how to meet the ethnic challenge
and provide an equal opportunity to the diversity of hispanic
students in the Los Angeles area, and how to assure that Puerto
Rican students in particular, as a minority within a minority,
can be assured of equal opportunities in higher education.
Employment issues will include whether government agencies
are dealing with the specific employment needs of the minority
people, particularly Puerto Ricans and whether Puerto Ricans
receive an equal opportunity in seniority and in affirmative
action programs in the county. Also discussed will be the impact
of union policies and of language problems.

OFF SHORE OIL DRILLING: THE IMPACT ON SAN DIEGO
OF LEASE SALE 48

Public forum with two-way audio / video satellite link to federal
officials

Sponsor: University of California San Diego Extension; City
of San Diego; County of San Diego; San Diego Comprehensive
Planning Organization

The forum will examine the conflict between the need for a
comprehensive national energy policy and the concern for local
integrity in assessing and responding to potential adverse
impacts from such a policy on a specific geographic region. It
will also address the broader issue of how citizens in a
technologically advanced democratic society can exert in¬
fluence on the development of public policy when the issues
involved are complex and technical. Secretary of the Interior
Cecil Andrus and California Senator Alan Cranston will par¬
ticipate by satellite because of the federal involvement in the
issue.

PAGE 10 HUMANITIES NETWORK

SPRING 1978

Calendar

THURSDAY. MARCH 30

Long Beach, 9 a.m.-5 p.m. “Public Policy Issues and Distributive Justice,”
Edgewater Hyatt House, 6400 E. Pacific Coast Highway. Sponsored by
California State University, Long Beach (213 ) 498-4704
FRIDAY, MARCH 31

Long Beach, 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Second session, “Public Policy Issues and
Distributive Justice.”

San Diego, 9 a.m.-5 p.m. “Who Owns the Coast?” University of California San
Diego, Alcala Park. Sponsored by Coastal Act Research Group (714) 484-1807
Calexico, 9 a.m.-10:30 p.m. “Migrant Alien Worker Conference,” 720 Heber
Avenue. Sponsored by Imperial Valley Campus of San Diego State University
San Francisco, 8-10 p.m. “Personality, Decision-Making and Personal Faith,”
2041 Larkin St. Sponsored by the Church for the Fellowship of All Peoples. (415)
566-0479

SATURDAY, APRIL 1

Long Beach, 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Third session, “Public Policy Issues and Distributive
Justice.”

San Diego, 9 a.m. -5 p.m. Second session, “Who Owns the Coast?”

Calexico, 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Second session, “Migrant Alien Worker Conference.”
Santa Monica, 1-4:30 p.m. “Taxes,” 1260 18th St. Sponsored by Unitarian
Community Church of Santa Monica

Ventura, 9 a m. -3: 30 p.m. “Planning for the Future of Ventura County,” Buena
High School, 5670 Telegraph Rd. Sponsored by Environmental Resource
Agency of Ventura County (805 ) 648-6131, x 2468.

SATURDAY, APRIL 8

San Diego, 9 a.m.-5 p.m. “Counter-Cultures and Community Life: Con¬
tributions and Controversies,” Montezuma Hall, San Diego State University
campus. Sponsored by the American Studies Program at SDSU. (Note: ac¬
tivities related to this conference will take place on campus at Aztec Center
from April 4-7.)

East Palo Alto, 9:30 a. m. -5:30 p.m. “School Finance,” 2050 Cooley Ave.
Sponsored by Stanford-Midpeninsula Urban Coalition (415) 497-3335
MONDAY, APRIL 10

Sacramento, 7:30-8 p.m. “Themes in the Black World,” KVIE-TV, Channel 6.
Sponsored by the Sacramento Area Black Caucus (916) 456-4981

TUESDAY, APRIL 11

Big Bear Lake, 7:30 p.m. “Government Decentralization,” North Shore
Elementary School, 765 Stanfield Cutoff. Sponsored by the Big Bear Valley
Mental Health Association (714) 866-7298
WEDNESDAY, APRIL 12

San Diego, 9 a. m. -4:30 p.m. “Indian Treaty Rights and Sovereignty: A Legacy
in Perpetuity,” Montezuma Hall, San Diego State Campus. Sponsored by the
Department of American Indian Studies at SDSU.

of' Events —

THURSDAY, APRIL 13

San Diego, 9 a. m. -4:30 p.m. Second ession of “Indian Treaty Rights and
Sovereignty”

FRIDAY, APRIL ‘/sV2

Claremont, 12 noon-10 p.m. “Politics of Preservation,” Santa Fe Railroad
Station, downtown Claremont. Sponsored by Pitzer College
San Francisco, 8-10 p.m. “Religious Values and Public Policy,” 2041 Larkin St.
Sponsored by the Church for the Fellowship of all Peoples $

SATURDAY, SPRIL 15

Claremont, 8:30 a.m.-3 p.m. Second session of “Politics of Preservation,”

Pitzer College Campus, 1050 North Mills Ave.

FRIDAY, APRIL 14

Weed, 7-10 p.m. “Siskiyou Awareness Conference,” College of the Siskiyous Ijj:
Theater. Sponsored by College of the Siskiyous (916) 938-4463 $

SATURDAY, APRIL 15

Weed, 8 a.m.-3 p.m. Second session, “Siskiyou Awareness Conference,” College
of the Siskiyous Theater.

SATURDAY, APRIL 22

San Diego, 8:30 a. m. -3:30 p.m. “The Role of Cultural Heritage and Public
Policy: Immigration Issues,” Federal Building. Sponsored by the Union of Pan
Asian Communities of San Diego County (714) 232-6454 li

MONDAY, APRIL 24

Sacramento, 7(30-8 p.m. “Themes in the Black World,” KVIE-TV, Channel 6.
Sponsored by the Sacramento Area Black Caucus. ■§

TUESDAY, APRIL 25

Los Angeles, 9 a.m.-4 p.m. “Volunteerism and Public Policy,” Muses Room,
Museum of Science and Industry, Exposition Park. Sponsored by National
Council of Jewish Women. (Admission by pre-registration only) (213) 651-2930
San Francisco, 12 noon-1 p.m. “Regulation and Control of Lobbying,” KPFA
Radio, 94 FM. Sponsored by Pacifica Radio-KPFA with the cooperation of the
ACLU Foundation of Northern California

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 26 1

San Francisco, 7:30 p.m. Panel discussion on “Regulation and Control of
Lobbying.” KPFA Radio, 94 FM

FRIDAY, APRIL 28 §

San Diego, 7-7:30 p.m. “Newsthink,” KPBS, Channel 15. Sponsored by the San
Diego State University Foundation S

TUESDAY, MAY 9

Big Bear Lake, 7:30 p.m. “School Bonds,” North Shore Elementary School, 765
North Stanfield Cutoff. Sponsored by the Big Bear Valley Mental Health
Association (714 ) 866-7298 f:

FRIDAY, MAY 26

San Diego, 7-7:30 p.m. “Newsthink,” KPBS, Channel 15. Sponsored by the San
Diego State University Foundation

Historian
Wins Award

Humanities Council member W.
Turrentine Jackson, Professor of History
at the University of California, Davis, was
recently selected to receive the honor of
1978 Fellow of the California Historical
Society. The award was given in
recognition of Jackson’s outstanding
contributions to California and Western
history, as teacher, scholar and author of
significant books such as “When Grass
Was King,” “Wagon Roads West” and
“Early Planning Efforts at Lake Tahoe.”

The Historical Society also commended
his pioneer work in developing historical
perspectives in environmental studies
centered on the natural resources of the
Lake Tahoe area.

Jackson accepted the award at the
Historical Society’s Annual Meeting
Banquet in Carlsbad on March 11.

Courses by Newspaper

A special series on California taxation
issues will appear in newspapers
throughout the state in the fall of 1978.

The series is being coordinated by the
California Tax Reform Association with a
grant from the California Council for the
Humanities in Public Policy. It is linked to
a 15-part national newspaper series en¬
titled “Taxation: Myths and Realities,”
prepared by Courses by Newspaper (CbN)
at University Extension, UC San Diego.

Courses by Newspaper, now five years
old, is funded annually by the National
Endowment for the Humanities. The
taxation course is the ninth in an ongoing
series that began in 1973.

The California Tax Reform Association
is a statewide citizen’s tax reform
organization based in Sacramento. The
3,000 member group works to develop
citizen awareness and participation in the
California state and local tax system.

Dr. George A. Colburn, CbN Director,
believes that California editors will be
especially receptive to the series in an
election year when “tax reform” is on the

New Council Members

Continued from page 7

District, Sanger Union High School, and
Fairmont Elementary. A member of
Rotary International, he served in 1974-75
as District Governor of Rotary for the
central California Area.

Dr. Wasserstrom is a member of the
California State Bar as well as a professor,
and spent three years as Dean of the
College of Arts and Sciences at Tuskegee
Institute. He holds degrees in philosophy

from Amherst and the University of
Michigan and a law degree from Stanford
and has received four fellowships in¬
cluding a Guggheim and a Visiting
Fellowship to All Souls College at Oxford.
He has written more than a dozen articles
and a book, and has edited three more
books on various aspects of morality. He is
a member of the Editorial Board of The
Monist.

lips of most politicians. In addition to the
special California newspaper series, there
will be public radio programs, seminars,
workshops, and public forums on the
subject of taxation held throughout the
state in fall 1978. Funding for the
development of these related activities is
also provided by the CCHPP.

Newspapers in California signing up for
the CbN series will receive the California
series as well. In the past, more than 30
California newspapers have participated
in CbN program, which is available free of
charge to the first newspaper in a com¬
munity that requests it.

The newspaper series serves as the
basis of a credit course offered at par¬
ticipating colleges and universities. CbN
provides books, texts, and promotional
materials for these courses. Several
thousand California residents have earned
college credit for CbN courses over the
years.

Academic coordinator of the national
series is Dr. George F. Break, professor of
economics at UC Berkeley. Coordinating
the California series is Dr. Elliott
Brownlee, associate professor of economic
history at UC Santa Barbara.

Listed below are the topics and authors
for the California series:

1. Why State and Local Taxes?

2. The History of California Taxation:
Where Do We Fit In?

Dr. Elliott Brownlee

3. Tests of a Good Tax System: How
Does California Stand Up?

Professor Brian Murphy, Dept, of
Political Science, UC Santa Cruz

4. The Ethics of Tax Evasion

Professor John Crossley, Jr., School of

Religion, USC

Set for Fall

5. Unemployment and Taxes in
California

Professor Art Pearl, Dept, of
Psychology, UC Santa Cruz

6. Financing Education: What are the
Options?

Professor John Crossley, Jr.

7. Can We Design a Better State Per¬
sonal Income Tax System?

Martin Huff, Executive Director,
Franchise Tax Board

8. Local Taxation and Inflation
Professor Perry Shapiro, Department of

Economics, UC Santa Barbara

9. Proportional or Progressive Taxes:
Which Are More “Fair?”

Dean William May, School of Religion,
USC

10. A Political Legitimacy : The Biggest
Tax Problem?

Professor Brian Murphy

11. Should We Tax the Corporate
“Person?”

Dr. Mark Juergensmeyer, Center for
Ethics and Social Policy

12. Taxation in a Complex Society:
Recipe for Resentment

Dr. Otis Graham, Professor of History,
UC Santa Barbara

13. The Way America Taxes: An An¬
thropological Perspective

Dr. Laura Nader, Anthropology, UC
Berkeley

14. Alternate City and County Revenues:
Are Taxes the Solution or the Problem?

Dr. Clayborne Carson, Urban History,
Stanford University

15. Taxation and Human Values: A
Contradiction in Terms or Merely Difficult
to Imagine?

Professor Richard Musgrave, Depart¬
ment of Economics, UC Berkeley

HUMANITIES NETWORK SPRING 1978

PAGE 11

Assembly Bill 65 - the Legislature's Response

Prepared by the California Coalition for Fair School Finance

Assembly Bill 65, passed by the California Legislature and signed by Governor Brown
in September, 1977, carries financial provisions that will affect every elementary and
secondary school in California. In addition to making substantial changes in the state
school finance system, AB 65 covers a wide array of education areas: proficiency
testing, staff development, school improvement programs and programs for special
categories of children.

The Legislature, in revising parts of the laws specifying how schools are to be paid for,
was responding directly to the 1976 Serrano v. Priest decision of the California Supreme
Court, in which the Court said that differences in dollar amounts spent on each school
child in the state were unconstitutional if the spending differences were caused by
disparities in local property values among school districts. The Court ordered the
Legislature to reduce such wealth-related differences in spending to amounts con¬
siderable less than $100 per pupil by 1980. The Court also declared unconstitutional the
wide variation in tax rates which is also caused by vast differences in local districts’
property wealth. By these rulings, the decision required changes in the state’s system of
education finance, but it did not say whether or how much new money must be put into
education, where such money should be raised, nor how it should be spent. It specifically
handed those problems to the representatives of the citizens of California.

People speak now of the “Serrano principle” which holds that the quality of education
a child receives must not depend on the wealth of his neighbors, and the “Serrano
challenge” which faced the Legislature in its efforts to modify California’s system of
school finance to conform to the Court’s mandate.

To meet the challenge, AB 65 makes several changes in the existing finance methods.
The Legislature did not alter the primary source of funding for schools — local property
taxes — or the limit placed on the number of dollars a school district may raise per pupil.
Neither did it put aside the traditional state procedure for funding schools — payment of
a guaranteed minimum level of support for each student in the state.

AB 65 amends the funding formulas, lowering state support for districts high in
assessed valuation of real property, while increasing the support to districts with low
property values. It also requires some of the property tax dollars raised in “high wealth”
districts to be paid to the state for redistribution to lower wealth districts. This is in¬
tended to lower high tax rates in “low wealth” districts through an increase in state
support. The new law allows expenditures to increase faster in low wealth districts, thus
reducing the differences in spendable income between them and high wealth districts.

The actual impact of these provisions will vary widely among school districts
throughout the state. The formulas are based on statewide averages and depend on
statewide fluctuations in assessed valuation; their application in each individual district
depends on the special characteristics of that district. In general, high wealth districts
will receive less state aid and will have higher property taxes than before AB 65. Low
wealth districts will have lower property taxes because they will receive more aid from
the state. Some of the low wealth districts will have considerably more money to spend per
student than before AB 65.

Specifically, AB 65 intends to meet the Serrano challenge by :

• increasing the state-guaranteed minimum support per pupil (foundation program)

• retaining the ceiling on the amount of money each district may raise per pupil
(revenue limit)

• adjusting the inflation increase allowed in revenue limits, so that low wealth school
districts can increase their income faster than high wealth districts

• reducing the minimum state payment per pupil (basic aid) to $120 for all districts,
causing higher wealth districts to receive less state aid.

• guaranteeing that the state will maintain a constant share of the total foundation
program even when statewide property values increase (slippage)

• reducing tax rate disparities among districts by requiring higher wealth districts to
contribute some local property tax dollars to the state for distribution to lower
wealth districts. In low wealth districts, tax rates are expected to be lowered
because of additional state support, some of which will be collected from the taxes
levied in higher wealth districts.

The Scope of the Problem

Whatever California’s problems in
education may be, they are complicated
by the sheer size of the operation.
California has more children in Kin¬
dergarten through high school — four and
a half million — than 34 other states have
in total population. Public schooling is the
state’s largest employer: 1,042 districts
employ more than 360,000 people, who
make up 4.6 percent of the state’s work
force. Together, the students, teachers,
administrators, and support staff com¬
prise nearly a quarter of the state’s
inhabitants. The cost of all this is more
than seven billion dollars per year, larger
than the Gross National Product of many
small nations.

Along with size comes immense
variation — the number of students in one
school ranges from under ten to over 3,000.
Los Angeles Unified School District
contains 650,000 pupils, nearly 14 percent

of all public school students in the state.
Four more urban districts, Long Beach,
Oakland, San Diego and San Francisco,
account for another 6 percent between
them so that these five large districts
contain one-fifth of the state’s school
population. On the other hand, rural
districts exist where the three trustees
outnumber the two teachers, and total
school enrollment is under 20. Assessed
property value per child in a district
ranges from a low of just over $600 to a
high of nearly $2.5 million.

There are problems, too, beyond sheer
numbers. Of the 4.5 million students in the
state, more than a million come from
homes whose income is below the welfare
needs standards. Almost half a million
have definable mental or physical han¬
dicaps that make their education difficult.
Over 250,000 come to school not speaking
the English language.

Does AB 65 comply with the Serrano decision? The Court required that “all school
districts have an equal ability in terms of revenue to provide students with substantially
equal opportunities for learning.” Wealth-related disparities in expenditures must be
reduced to “insignificant differences,” and wealth-related variations in tax rates must
be reduced to “nonsubstantial variations.” The Legislature hopes that the revisions
included in AB 65 will, in fact, result in a system which the Court will find in compliance
with its rulings.

A number of other provisions of AB 65 provide major funding to eligible districts on the
basis of special needs and qualifications of individual students in the district. Such
“categorical” aid is not considered “Serrano-related” because the Court specifically
excluded it from the equalization requirements.

AB 65 and Your Local School District

Will your school district have more or less money to spend on schools in the coming
years? Will your property tax rates for schools go up or down? Will your school district
receive equalized funds or pay in some of your locally raised money to the state school
fund?

Answers to these questions have to be based on information specific to your school
district. The actual calculations to determine income will be done by your district ad¬
ministrators and by the business staff of your County Superintendent of Schools. These
calculations depend upon your district’s

• average daily attendance

• property wealth (assessed valuation)

• property tax rate for schools

• revenue received from state guaranteed minimum support payments

• ceiling on the amount of money it can raise per pupil (revenue limit)

• variations in enrollment from year to year

• students who have special needs, such as the handicapped, bilingual, low income

• special programs such as School Improvement Programs

Some of the formulas in AB 65 depend on annual statewide changes in assessed
valuation; others depend on the actual amount of money appropriated by the Legislature
or the amount contributed to the State School Fund by high wealth districts. These
factors combine to create a financial effect which will vary from year to year from
district to district.

AB 65 and
Proposition 13

Any legislative measure that proposes a
major reduction in local property taxes,
which provide more than half the money
for school support under the present
system, would, if passed, have an effect on
school finance and AB 65. Proposition 13 on
the June state ballot, known as the Jarvis-
Gann Initiative, would accomplish such a
reduction, limiting property tax to 1
percent of the full cash value of property.

This measure is a Constitutional
amendment which could only be revoked
or changed by another vote of the people.
The reduction in property tax is
specifically made permanent in the
initiative, which prohibits any raise in
taxes on real property in the future, either
by the Legislature or by the citizens of
cities, counties or special districts.

The language of the initiative provides
no clue as to how the amount of property
tax revenue still allowed to be collected
should be divided among the many
agencies that now depend upon it. Section
1 says that the 1 percent tax is “to be
collected by the counties and apportioned
according to law to the districts within the
counties.” Since there is now no law that
covers such an apportionment it is not
possible at present to. predict how the
money would be divided.

The amount of loss to the schools would
depend upon what proportion of the
remaining revenue was allocated to them,
or what other sources of supplementary
money (such as high taxes of other kinds
or appropriations from the state surplus)
were supplied for school use.

Legislation has recently been proposed
to either make special provision for the
schools or to raise other kinds of taxes, but
nothing has been passed.

Since the initiative also makes no
mention of replacement revenues, no one
can say at this point whether or how much
lost school support would be replaced.

Operating the schools as usual until the
money runs out and then closing them
down completely is not a legal option for
school districts unless the laws are

changed. At present California public
schools are required by law to be in session
for 175 days a year.

Legislative analysts familiar with
school finance are of the opinion that the
Serrano-related features of AB 65, as
outlined above, could not be enacted if
Proposition 13 were to pass.

A recently-passed legislative measure
that also relates to property tax reduction
is SB 1. This law relates only to owner-
occupied homes, not to all real property,
and consequently will produce a revenue
loss small enough to be offset by the state
surplus. Replacing the lost money in this
way would mean that SB 1 would not have
a significant effect on the implementation
of AB 65.

PAGE 12 HUMANITIES NETWORK SPRING 1978

The Right to Education; Equality and the State

Continued from page 4
be educated by the state since the state as
the most powerful of the institutions which
confront him is not likely to respect this
measure of independence to which he is so
attached nor is it likely, in educating him,
to form in him the critical powers he will
need if he is to judge its acts. A person so
situated and so disposed will wish to keep
both education and culture as far as
possible outside the sphere of influence of
the state so as to insure that the in¬
dividuals they form will be autonomous
and creative in a way that, Mill believes,
the interest of the state is unlikely to
permit. Such an education will, at any
rate, have a kind of normative status and
if regrettably it is not feasible that the
education of all should be carried out on
like principles, the special provision which
the state must make for the poor must
never be generalized or allowed to absorb
the system of educational provision in the
private sector.

Mill’s discussion of these matters is
really a straightforward application of
classical liberalism to education and for
just this reason it may strike one as
hopelessly out of date. Our situation today
is almost exactly the reverse of Mill’s in
that private-purchase schemes of
education now serve only a small minority
of those who have to provide an education
for their children; and the great majority
of the latter attend schools that are both
financed and managed by public
authority. Whether Mill’s fear that such a
state-managed system of education would
necessarily be “a contrivance for
moulding people to be exactly like one
another” has been confirmed by the
American experience is still a matter of
debate.

It should be pointed out in this con¬
nection that during most of our national
history it has been widely felt that the
public schools should contribute strongly
to the creation of a measure of uniformity
among the diverse groups of which our
population has been composed. Mill’s fear
has accordingly not been widely shared by
observers of the public educational system
in this country. One further reason for this
lack of apprehension has been the fact that
although public school systems have in
this country been “state-managed” in the
sense that they were maintained out of tax
monies, the principle of local control has
been honored and therefore a centralized
national school system in the European
manner has not been a feature of the
American scene.

One result of this set of arrangements
has been that wide disparities exist bet¬
ween the levels of educational provision in
different localities as these are measured
in terms of expenditures per student. One
might even say that within a system of
publicly supported education an analogue
has emerged to Mill’s contrast between
those parents who are capable of
providing an education for their children
out of their own resources and without
reliance on public aid and the poorer
parents who cannot. Whatever the merits
of the system of local control, however, it
seems very doubtful whether it has been a
very effective counterweight to the kind of
homogenization that Mill feared. Broadly
speaking, it appears that with the in¬
creasing nationalization of all sectors of
American society educational authorities
exercise little control.

In any case the existence of these
inequalities within the public system leads
to a new form of intervention by the state
that is designed to equalize the levels of
educational provision in the different
school districts — rich and poor — within

the state. In some ways, at least in the
American context, this new role for the
state may prove as significant as either of
the two prior forms of state involvement in
education that were mentioned above: aid
to poor parents within the framework of a
private-purchase system of education and
the requirements that all localities
maintain a free public school to be sup¬
ported out of (mainly) local tax monies. If
under a locally managed and financed
system of educational provision it is as
though parents — actual parents as well as
those who have been or may be — were
banding together in localities and under
the convenient auspices of public authority
to provide jointly for the education of their
children, the new requirement of state¬
wide equality in levels of educational
support places much greater emphasis on
the obligation of all the citizens of the state
— in this case the State of California — to
support the education of all the children in
that state.

To this new emphasis there in fact
corresponds a conception of the right to
education in which common membership
in a political community really replaces
the parent-child relationship as the basis
for the right to education and its
corresponding duty. In a democratic
society at least, it can be argued, each
citizen has an obligation to see to it that his
fellow citizens are enabled to function
competently and competently and in¬
telligently in the public role which a share
in social decision-making carries with it. A
democracy in which this obligation is not
honored and wide sectors of the population
remain illiterate or receive only the most
rudimentary education would con¬
spicuously fail to realize one major
aspiration that has been associated with

democracy as a political system.

One may also suspect that the formal
right of participation which such a society
would extend to its citizens would be
substantially undercut as a result of the
educational inequalities it would permit to
exist. There is a parallel here (and one
which the Serrano decision itself draws)
between the understandings governing the
public provision of education and the
principle that legal assistance must be
made available by the state to those who
have to appear in its courts but cannot
provide legal counsel for themselves. If
this principle were not recognized, the
right to a fair legal education of matters
in which their interests are involved would
hardly be of much value to the poor.
Similarly, the formal right of participation
in the political life of a democratic society
would lose most of its value if the
educational qualifications for such par¬
ticipation were to be available only
through private-purchase or in the inferior
form which may be all that a poor locality
can provide for itself.

This, I say, is a powerful and persuasive
line of argument and if its logic is accepted
then there can be no real doubt about the
soundness — moral as well as legal — of
theSerrano decision. In this spirit it might
be argued that there is no necessary
connection between the special respon-
siblity that parents have for the education
of their children and the present system or .
supporting public education largely out of
the locally available tax base. There is, in
other words, no special right on the part of
parents in certain economically favored
areas to make themselves the unit of
cooperation for purposes of supporting
education to the exclusion of parents in
less affluent localities. This, too, seems to

me to be a sound argument and it certainly
suggests that once the framework of
government is used by parents for the
purpose of supporting and managing the
education of their children these
arrangements must be subject to the
general requirements of justice to all the
members of the political community — in
this case the state — under whose auspices
this cooperation takes place. The ap¬
pearance of a conflict between a con¬
ception of the right to education to which a
duty on the part of the parent corresponds
and one in which the role of citizens and
fellow citizens are of paramount im¬
portance would thus be removed.

What then are the “problematic
aspects” of which I spoke at the outset?
After all, in the Serrano decision the
Supreme Court has taken care to separate
the issue of equality of support for which
the state is to be responsible from that of
the actual management of schools — the
hiring of teachers, the design of the
curriculum — which local districts will
continue to control. One does not have to
be an incorrigible sceptic, however, to
wonder whether in practice this distinction
can be quite so neatly made and whether
the one absolutely certain consequence
that will flow from these decisions is not
that the state will exercise even more
power over all aspects of public
elementary and secondary education than
it already does. If this is so, and if one
believes as I do for both the reasons stated
by Mill and others that grow out of our own
recent national experience, that the state
is very poorly equipped to meet these
responsibilties, the enthusiasm which
would otherwise be the only proper
response to a just decision in a matter of
such broad human consequence must
inevitably be qualified. It is an ironic fact
of our national history that the effort to
realize effective social equality typically
issues in the transfer of responsibility to
higher and higher administrative levels of
government and in these lofty regions the
conditions of vision tend to be poor, at least
when it comes to perceiving what is really
taking place in the fog-bound regions
below.

As a result the situation as regards
education is already one in which both
teachers and schools find themselves in
the relentless grip of “innovative
programs” that have been decided upon in
a stunning degree of abstraction from the
realities of human nature and school life.
Whether in these circumstances a new
increment of responsibility and authority
for the administrative levels of the
educational bureaucracy will be
associated with a greater capacity to
perceive educational needs and the dif¬
ferences among these that correspond to
the different sectors and levels
American society, otherwise than through
a political and legal telescope, must
remain at best unclear. As examples of the
insensitivity of government when it
operates in this sphere, I would cite the
action of the Federal judge in the Boston
desegregation case who ordered the
Boston Latin School to use racial quotas in
its admission procedures and the in¬
sistence of the Ministry of Education in
Britain that grammar schools that wish to
qualify for state aid become com¬
prehensive schools. When enforced in this
way the requirements of justice become
an instrument of social and cultural
homogenization that confirms Mill’s worst
fears. I hope that the Serrano decision will
not become the instrument of a similar
misconception of the long-run interest of
our society in matters of education.

Rights and School Realities

In the paper presented on rights and
the consciousness of rights, the
statement is made, “in conclusion we
are conscious of education as an
emerging right, not just because it is
increasingly desired and increasingly
possible to provide, but also because we
have a moral obligation to develop our
intelligence.” Language in the Serrano-
Priest decision seems to support this
conclusion. It certainly suggests that
inequality of education denied a basic
right. However much we agree on such
words as right, moral, equal, the issue
for school people in the field is how to
translate these agreeable terms into
specific action. Once the philosophical
dust has settled, we’re faced with a
practical question such as, “What’ll we
do with the kids next Tuesday?” and, in
the context of the Serrano-Priest
decision, “Will we be able to do as
much for our kids next Tuesday as the
school district next door?”

Now things begin to get sticky when
we apply the word, “equality.” There is
a serious risk that we will find our¬
selves in the Orwellian situation of
some districts being more equal than
others. But how can that be, if the
districts are provided with equal
financial support? Doesn’t that
guarantee equality? Well, of course it
doesn’t!

If District A has a large, transient
population, with a low socio-economic
status and District B hasn’t, District A
will need money for school aides to
provide for safety, money for special
reading classes or reduced class size,

salaries for more psychologists and
counselors, more funds for materials
and textbook attrition, money to pay for
specialized program development,
more money for insurance costs
because of increased vandalism, and
more money for a host of specialized
needs which are essential, and are alien
to District B.

Or if District A has a large non-
English-speaking population and
District B hasn’t. District A must spend
money for bilingual education. And if
District A has a host of other individual
needs lacking in District B, District A
will spend yet more money. Now, given
equal distribution of funds, how is it
possible for these two districts to be
equally effective in their regular
program when the funds of District A
have been depleted by special needs?
So it’s possible for equality to lead to
inequality because of a simplistic view
of financial support.

Equality should be a goal, and in view
of widely diverse needs among school
districts, equality requires looking at
the needs of those being educated, not
counting the community’s factories.
And unless the state is willing to
provide some inequality of support to
bring about some equality of
educational oppotunity, such
philosophical notion as right, moral and
equal, will remain carefully tended
velvet boxes in ivory towers.

— Ramon C'ortines
Superintendent of Schools
Pasadena

HUMANITIES NETWORK SPRING 1978 PAGE 13

Humanities, Educational Quality, and Serrano

Continued from page 3
himself into a catastrophe, apd the teacher
could not resist a sarcastic comment. She
observes and judges every deviation from
immobile silence.

All children have their reading work¬
book on their desk now. Silence. Teacher
towers over them, examines the book, sees
a picture of a family eating breakfeast.
“Name some cereal that you can eat.”

Simultaneously she turns to Frank and
says sharply, “Take it out.” The boy had a
pencil in his mouth. Frank, stunned,
replies “Bugs Bunny cereal.” He responds
to her attack by answering her questions.
His troubles are only beginning now.

“Bugs Bunny cereal?” she says, “I
never heard of Bugs Bunny cereal. Have
you class?”

“Noooooo.” wails the class.

Teacher then inquires again. Another
boy, Richard, says that the name of the
cereal is Tricks.

“Spell it, Frank,” she commands. Her
voice is slightly venomous as if she an¬
ticipates that Frank will make a mistake,
and she is counting on it. “Go to the
board.” She has upped the ante for Frank.
Now he must perform for the class. The
pressure is mounting.

Before Frank can get to the board,
teacher says “Class, what is the first
letter?” Frank is already compromised.
She implies that he cannot do the work and
that there is no point waiting for him to
come up with the answer. He is her
whipping boy.

Class says “T”.

“Come on Frank, come on,” prods the
teacher. Frank is trying to get the chalk to
the board, and he struggles to form a letter
“t”. He finally makes a tiny t on the board.

“No, that is not right” she snarls. Frank
did not cross the t at the right place so far
as the teacher was concerned.

“Next letter,” says teacher. Kids say
“r”. Frank preempted the class by
beginning his r right away.

“Frank, Oh, no!” That is not an r.”
Frank finally makes an r. A tortured i
follows.

“Next letter,” she snaps.

Class says “X”. Teacher does a double
take. The cereal is spelled Trix.

Before Frank can get his chalk to the
board — literally, between the time he
picks up the chalk and the time he tries to
put it to the board, she says “Look Frank,
an x goes like that” and she makes an x in
the air. Frank is condemned to write a four
letter word which has become obscene
denovo.

With Frank still at the board, chalk in
hand, the teacher says, with no transition,
“All right class, are you ready?” She turns
on a tape recorder containing a new
lesson. Frank stands deserted at the board
having been chastized for having his
pencil in his mouth, for not being able to
figure out the first letter of his own work,
for not being able to cross a “t” at the right
place, for not being able even to make an
x, and, most of all, for responding to the
teacher's original question... Mrs. Lam¬
berts never laid a hand on Frank, and, yet,
he did everything she asked and more.

Elsewhere I have analyzed this and
other examples at length in terms of the
intrapsychic effects the teacher-child
relationship has on the development of the
child. These findings cannot be restated
here in detail, but let me summarize what
may be obvious. The child in a harsh,
disciplined classroom or a gentle setting
usually finds himself in a situation where
the teacher establishes an expectation and
the child is compliant. The power of the
teacher is enormous, the ability of the
child to alter the situation is small, and

often it is pitiful as in the case where rage
leads to disciplinary infractions. Most
children settle with their circumstances
by entering into a ritualized pattern of
compliance which I believe instills in them
a specific personality quality which I have
called “hyperindividualism”, a quality
which combines drivenness and com¬
pliance. It literally becomes a drive to
comply, and I leave unexamined here the
implications this has for autonomy,
creativity, and the values of the
humanities.

All of tne economic debate and policy
analysis which we might do in Sacramento
or Los Angeles or Washington does not
have much impact on little Frank or Mrs.

Serrano Can
Make A Difference

I think Serrano can make a dif¬
ference because it can open up for the
first time in many years a positive
move toward a public debate about
what schools can do. Up until now the
whole monopoly of discussion bas been
one story after another of what schools
cannot do . . .

What we need to do now is take the
decision out of the notion of merely
dollars and start talking about
education and what it has to be, what
makes it good; in that context we’re got
to do more than just talk about more
bread.

We’ve got to talk about children in the
context of a society; you can’t have an
equal education in an unequal society;
that’s impossible. So the whole
relationship between schooling and
whatever kind of society we want to live
in, whatever kind of total vision for the
future we have, and what the logical
consequences of this kind of schooling
are for those kinds of goals, becomes
crucial.

For instance, whether we talk about
full employment as a right is to me
basically immaterial. As a necessity, I
think it’s absolutely imperative or our
society will not function in any way at
all that can bring it back, any kind of
notion of a society unless we start with
an assumption of useful employment,
and that schooling and employment are
related. We can sit around and talk
about them as not being related, but
schools are primarily a status quo
institution. In a credentialed society,
they organize people’s future lives, and
we must address that in some com¬
prehensive and understandable way.
To make it recognized that from a
political perspective a change in
education, to provide equal education
for a better society for most of us, is an
imperative.

One last point I think we have to look
at is how we got ourselves into the mess
we’re in. One reason so much of the
stuff is coming out of velvet boxes and
ivory towers is that the people who
have been involved with the ad¬
ministration of schooling have not been
very helpful in the last 20 years in
generating proposals for adequate
education into the public discussions.
They left it to us ivory tower
philosophers to do that job, and I would
suggest that I’d feel much happier if
they did it and I could go back and do
other kinds of things . . .

— Art Pearl
Professor of Psychology
U.C. Santa Cruz

Lamberts as day after day they enact their
rituals. If you pay Mrs. Lamberts more or
less money, she is not likely to alter her
relationship with the child because she
operates by unconscious assumptions and
nothing has been done to enlighten her or
the child about the possibility of engaging
in a more productive and enjoyable
relationship.

There is an alternative to what I have
called “the essential relationship”
prevailing in most classsrooms. Teachers
and principals can create elemental
change by bringing to bear a different
concept into educational dynamics. I refer
to the concept of play as it is discussed by
people like Gregory Bateson and Erik
Erikson. By play I do not mean, “lets turn
the school into a great house of fun”,
although, at times that is good medicine. I
mean that school teachers and principals
must shift their energies from quelling
disruptions of their social systems to quite
another function. The teacher and prin¬
cipal must have as their committed
professional responsibility the function of
continually appraising the structure and
dynamics of the authority relationships
which dominate every encounter in the
schoolhouse. They must continually send
themselves messages about the messages
which they are transmitting between
themselves and the children. They must
consciously examine their unconscious
habits and do this regularly from time to
time. In the process, they must have as
their responsibility to alter their social
exchanges so that play — or alteration —
can occur rather than sustain a rigid,
ritualized pattern of teacher expectation
and compliance. These are the principles
of John Dewey, but now, with the advances
of social psychology available since Freud
and the kind of communications theory
demonstrated by Bateson, we know that
the ability to observe and alter relation¬
ships can be taught and learned. If
teachers and principals are able to
develop a professional quality and
responsibility which gives them self-
conscious control over the quality of the
pattern of their relationships with
children, then they will have achieved a
true professionalization.

To address the humanities issues, policy
makers are not first concerned with how
much money is spent on children, from
where it derives and to where it goes.
Rather, the problems of interest are the
circumstances under which educational
resources are to be spent. Such matters
are not so easy for policy makers to settle;
however they are not beyond the range of
consideration and are surely a legitimate
matter of public policy. I can offer two bits
of advice on this regard:

First, it is my conclusion that policy
makers are not substantially supported in
bringing to bear the well being of the
children as a reationale for either
justifying and enforcing- Serrano or for
condemning that landmark decision. The
Court’s decision has its own basis for
validation in the patterns for the collection
and expenditure of tax dollars and, in
effect, in bringing greater equality of
teacher salaries throughout the state. Tax
dollar distribution and teacher salary
equity are valuable issues in their own
right, but they should not be promulgated
on the backs of the children nor should
they be used to obscure authentic and
pressing humanistic issues which affect
California school children.

Second, if policy makers know that the
heart of the educational process f the
“essential structure” — is unaffected by
Serrano, then they are obligated to
distinguish economic reform of education
from the education reform of the teacher-

child relationship. They can then truly
speak and act clearly in each separate
arena and, in a rational light, conjoin
them. Education needs sound fiscal
support. It desperately needs pedagogical
transformation.

Humanist's

Perspective

Continued from page 5

quality in education which I find in the
Serrano decision. Attention has rightly
been centered on fair school finance, but
there is much more in Serrano even than
education as a right which much be
distributed fairly. “...Surely the right to
education today means more than access
to a classroom, the decision says. What
more? There are two implications. One is
the notion that the purpose of education is
to equip the individual to understand and
make a contribution to his or her own
society and culture. The other is the im¬
plication that each individual has the right
to be treated like the individual he or she
is, and to develop his or her own potential
to the maximum. This means that the
individual is not to be herded in large
crowds; it means he or she will have a
decent classroom and library and desk
and books ; it means that teachers will not
have so many children to manage that
they cannot devote personal attention to
each one; in short, it means things that
cost money.

Money cannot buy quality; we know
that; Serrano knows that. But we and
Serrano both know that lack of money can
insure low quality. As Francoise Sagan
once said, “Money may not buy happiness,
but it’s better to cry in a Jaguar than in the
back seat of a bus.” Serrano mandates a
financial structure in which education
could become better for many people
That does not mean it will ; that depends on
our legislature, our school systems, and
our families.

Education is political; we all know that.
Different interests compete for control of
education, and there’s no changing that.
The fight for better education, political as
it is, can nevertheless be a healthy fight.
But it has to be a fair fight. Some have
accused the Serrano decision of being
politically naive, as though it’s an
idealistic attempt to depoliticize
education. It’s idealistic, all right, but not
unpolitical. It simply tries to insure a fair
fight.

PAGE 14 HUMANITIES NETWORK SPRING 1978

— The Humanist's Story —

Continued from page 1
beyond financing. In Germany at the time
the film was shown in November, I missed
it, but heard from my daughter that I had
said something at the end that sounded
about as assertive as she thinks I sound to
her.

Was my brief flirtation with the
Coalition and KCET over? No. The
Coalition received some additional funds
for training potential speakers on the
significance of Serrano, and, by this time,
on the complexities of AB 65, the new
school finance bill. Their director called
from Northern California and asked if I
would “participate” in some of the
speaker training sessions. “Participate”
meant to give a talk on some of the deeper
value implications of Serrano. This I was
glad to do, and it also gave me more in¬
sight into the underlying concerns of the
people in the Coalition. They wanted the
people of California to get excited about
public education. They wanted them to
catch some of the idealism of Serrano, and
to understand what the Legislature had
done — and left undone — to implement it.

I met with the training people three
times, in Oakland, North Hollywood and
San Clemente. I would love to have done
more, but that was all the time I had.
Interesting that the Coalition people had
time for all of them (at least six, I think),
and all on a purely voluntary basis. I had
and still have the feeling that we
humanists were letting them down. The
women whom I heard cdnduct the greater
part of each training session were well
prepared and did a superb job. They didn’t
say whether they really liked AB 65, whose
complexities they were reducing to un¬
derstandable terms, but I got the feeling

their enthusiasm for Serrano itself con¬
siderably outstripped their enthusiasm for
AB 65. Perhaps that’s only my own
feeling; while I like the educational
reform portions of AB 65 (increased
funding for bilingual / bicultural
education and serious attention to special
education for those with exceptional
problems or abilities), I would also like to
see attention directed to the relationship
between curriculum and the needs both of
students and California and national in¬
stitutions.

I don’t know exactly what the Coalition
for Fair School Finance will be doing next,
or whether I will be involved. I do know
that my involvement with them for the last
seven or eight months has been both ex¬
citing and disturbing. Exciting because it
has forced me to think very precisely
about educational excellence, has exposed
me to points of view different from my
own, and has provided me with personal
contacts with some unusually able and
dedicated people. Disturbing because it
has laid bare the deep chasm between
humanistic theory and the practice of
education, pointed up my own inability
(and perhaps that of other humanists) to
deal intelligently and helpfully with public
education, and forced me to compare my
own commitment to the welfare of
California children with the greater
commitment of a group of courageous
people. On balance, I have probably
received more from my involvement with
the project than I have given. In the future
I would hope that more university
professors in the humanities might plunge
in, take the risks, and receive the benefits
of dealing with some of California’s most
concrete issues.

— Television Documentary —

Continued from page 1

Actual filming was completed by the
third week in October and the film went to
the laboratory for processing. (Ten
thousand feet of film was shot; 980 feet
was used for the half-hour program.)

When the film returned from the
laboratory, Bob Navarro and Lewis
Teague, the director, sat down to the
editing table. By this time, the air date of
November 16 at 7:30 p.m. was firm. This
established, another producer from News
and Public Affairs was assigned to do the
live broadcast follow-up program that was
part of the original plan. It was decided
that “Serrano: Do Dollars Make
Scholars?” would fit well into the regular
“28 Tonight” news program slot, which
could then be extended to include the
follow-up program hosted by Ciji Ware to
create an hour-long special on the subject.

At the same time, a grant from the Dora
and Randolph Haynes Foundation
released CCHPP matching funds for the
special program and provided publicity
monies for the first half-hour documentary
film. All operations were now going at a
rush-hour pace, the editing and discussion
of the film, the writing of the narrative by
Bob Navarro, the organization of the
follow-up program by Ciji Ware who
contacted a variety of people to appear on
the show. The publicity department, with
the funding from the Haynes Foundation,
started work on press releases, radio
spots, newspaper ads.

The final editing phases involved many
discussions among the Producer,
Director, Project Director, Executive
Producer, and several other interested
and articulate judges. At the last minute,
sandwiched between film laboratory
errors and final ..print and air time,
members of the Coalition steering com¬
mittee flew to Los Angeles for a preview.
Due to last-minute film developing
problems, the preview took place in a

people-packed editing room on an editing
table.

The one-hour special program of “28
Tonight” used the regular opening with an
introduction as usual by Clete Roberts, the
program host. Starting the documentary
film after the half-hour break at 7:30
carried it past the regular 8:00 p.m. break
and was calculated to carry viewers to and
through the live in-studio follow-up call-in
program.

For state-wide distribution of the
documentary, KCET contacted all the
other Public Broadcasting stations in
California, and almost all agreed to show
it. All operating stations aired the
documentary between November 16 and
December 11, 1977. Publicity releases
went to all Los Angeles County School
Superintendents through the cooperation
and courtesy of the Los Angeles County
Superintendent of School Office. Ad¬
vertisements appeared in major
metropolitan newspapers throughout
California and radio spot announcement
were broadcast throughout the Los
Angeles metropolitan area.

Non-broadcast copies of the
documentary were produced for the
Coalition for Fair School Finance and
other agencies to lend to various com¬
munity groups for use in discussion
meetings.

We at KCET see the documentary as
successful in terms of the number of
viewers attracted, questions phoned in
about the subject of the documentary
during the follow-up program, budget
management, and station personnel at¬
titude about the final product. As with
most projects, it generated a considerable
learning experience at KCET and un¬
doubtedly7 Within the Coalition and the
Humanities Council also. The sense of
accomplishment is exceptionally keen in
the Educational Services Division of
KCET.

Policy-Maker’s Response

Continued from page 3

haven’t the depth to make a real dif¬
ference.

I’m at a point in my life where ex¬
periencing and expanding are going on a
rapidly accelerating rate. I want to be
together with people who are open and
vulnerable to, and affecting each other.
We must make our environment here,
during our time together, truly a model for
education — neither an authority model
nor an academic model, but a real,
human, feelingful model.

Some of us here in the Capitol now are
playing — seriously and lightly — with the
insight and recognition that “the politics
we do is who we are.” How we experience
ourselves personally, provides us the
vision we carry into all our relationships,
interpersonal and institutional. Our sense
of ourselves (our self-image), our sense of
our bodies (including our sexuality) our
emotionality (including our needs for
touch and affection and loneliness) and
our minds — really determine what we do
politically: where our money goes, what
we propose and oppose, how well we
speak, how clear we are, what’s important
to us.

In the same way, the education done in
California depends upon who the
educators are. The education you
(superintendents, teachers, trustees,
parents, professors) do is who you are.

So, whether we are legislators or
educators, only insofar as we address
ourselves (our own self-awareness and
self-esteen) and our own assumptions
about human nature and potential, human
growth and development and the natural
learning process, will we make our
dialogue about education meaningful and
valuable. Then we will know (and we
shouldn’t need Serrano to tell us) — that
we must make our schools into healthy
places that evoke (not stifle) the nature
and potential, the curiosity and energy and
motility of every human being who comes
into those places: teacher parent, ad¬
ministrator, trustee, student, whoever.

Especially since we’re here under the
auspices of the California Council for the
Humanities in Public Policy, we ought
certainly address and engage ourselves
about what it means to be human. Cer¬
tainly our entire society these days is
struggling to redefine what it means to be
human: tender rather than violent,
cooperative rather than competitive, open
rather than closed, direct rather than
masked, holistic rather than solely
cerebral, sexual rather than bland,
passionate rather than apathetic, touching
rather than distant, affectionate and even
moral. So must we, if we are to faithfully
make valuable this occasion, and our
being together! And so we must wonder
about the growth and development (in¬
cluding moral) in our California schools. I
mean development (including moral) —
not in the sense of rigid or sectarian or
dogmatic or ideological, but rather our
exploring how, in fact, we human beings
really develop into moral, caring, sen¬
sitive, tender persons, able to be present
and take responsibility for what happens
in our lives. Recognizing and realizing that
knowledge ought truly be the focus of all
efforts to promote the humanities in public
policy.

We who take responsibility for affecting
the lives of children, must become willing
to explore our own lives: our con¬
sciousness, and affect, our own bodies and
sexuality, our own needs for touch and
intimacy and tenderness. Only then will
we recognize the kind of environment
healthy for us, and desired by us. And only
then will we sufficiently recognize that
schools ought be that same kind of en¬

vironment. They ought be like healthy
homes, where people trust us, touch us,
love us and evoke us and never demean or
destroy us.

Serrano is a great occasion for a grand
dialogue that ought to go beyond the in¬
tellectual and the academic and become a
real basis for a holistic, healthy, human
transformation of our California schools.
It will be precisely, insofar as enough
persons are willing — beginning with you
and me — to explore and experience that
reality in our own lives.

If there’s a destructive teacher like the
Mrs. Lamberts described earlier, we
ought put her on notice: we ought put her
on a human development course and, if
she’s not able or willing to take it and grow
and become healthy, we ought release her
so as to release children from her
presence. No person has a right to be close
to kids, especially involuntarily confined
kids, unless she/he is willing to become
healthy, to be a healthy presence for those
children. That’s basic morality. A children
has a right to develop wholly and healthily,
so a child has a right to be in a healthy
place and presence!

Our schools have too much been places
where you have half a brain ( — the left
side), twoears (to listen with), a mouth (to
answer), and one hand preferably right,
(for writing), and that’s about all.
Feelings were to be left at home, and
bodies on the playground. But that’s not
near enough for me. We must make our
schools into places that recognize, respect
and affirm the rest, in fact, all of what it
means to be human: intellect and brain
(both halves), feelings and emotions, body
and energy and sexuality.

I’m a person who uses my cognitive
capacities well. Yet I spent years in
therapy regaining the rest of me,
repressed / taken away by home and
church and school, by well-meaning
persons who didn’t have a very good sense
about themselves and about human
growth and development.

The other night friends and I were
talking about growing up intimidated,
submissive and subdued... by family and
by church and by school. I reminded me of
the preface in Paolo Friere’s “Pedagogy
of the Oppressed” in which Richard Shaull
writes, “There is no such thing as a
neutral educational process. Education
either functions as an instrument which is
used to facilitate the integration of the
younger generation into the logic of the
present system and bring about con¬
formity to it, or it becomes ‘the practice
of freedom,’ the means by which men and
women deal critically and creatively with
reality and discover how to participate in
the transformation of their world.” Our
society can’t afford to have us, all or even
any, subdued or apathetic ; rather we must
transform our schools (and homes and
churches) into places that grow healthy
human beings, who care deeply (and
aren’t embarrassed about it) who are
cognitively competent (even excellent),
emotionally healthy and morally sound.

Again, and finally, to make our schools
healthy places, we’re required to make
ourselves healthy human beings — who
can see and be present with children in
healthy, human ways. I’d like to see people
use the Serrano occasion for improving the
character of childrens’ living, learning
and loving in California. I hope the League
of Women Voters and the AAUW and the
Council for the Humanities in Public
Policy and all of us will, personally and
enthusiastically enter into the struggle for
recognizing this as a time when we can
make a real, human, healthy difference in
the lives of our children!

HUMANITIES NETWORK SPRING 1978 PAGE lb

— Historical Overview-Serrano v. Priest: End of an Era? —

Continued from page 1
refused to ban segregation, ruling that
“separate but equal” facilities were legal,
but the justices did outlaw exclusion,
affirming that public education must be
available to all, regardless of race. Justice
C.J. Wallace wrote that “Ignorance, the
lack of mental and moral culture in earlier
life, is the recognized parent of vice and
crime in the after years.” Schooling, then,
protects youth from evil and immorality,
and on this basis the court ruled that
education is a basic constitutional right
covered by the equal protection clause. To
deny equal access to the public schools is
to deny equal protection of the law.

During the next half century, the court
embellished its initial, essentially
moralistic view of education. California’s
new constitution of 1879 added a political
justification, stating that “a general
diffusion of knowledge and intelligence”
was “essential to the preservation of
rights and liberties of people.” In 1885 the
State Supreme Court cited both this
constitutional language and Ward v. Flood
in an opinion requiring San Francisco to
provide public education for Chinese
children. Forty years later, when the court
ruled that Indians could not be barred
from public schools, the justices argued
that education had an important economic
and social role: “the common schools are
doorways opening into the chambers of
science, art and the learned professions,
as well as the fields of industrial and
commercial activities.”

In all cases, the California court had
upheld the concept of “separate but
equal” schools. But in 1946 a federal
district judge in San Francisco ruled that
segregation of Mexican children was
unconstitutional, and in the process, he
anticipated some of the U.S. Supreme
Court’s arguments in the Brown decision.
The Legislature took the hint and in 1946
repealed the last California statute
authorizing racially separate schools.
However, the existence of de facto
segregation imposed by custom or cir¬
cumstance was not treated until 1963. In
that year, the State Supreme Court held
that racial separation was illegal “even in
the absence of gerrymandering or other
affirmative discrimination.” The court
argued that the “right of equal opportunity
for education and the harmful con¬
sequences of separation require that
school boards take steps, insofar as
reasonably feasible, to alleviate racial
imbalance regardless of its cause.”

Thus, when Justice Sullivan wrote in the
1971 Serrano decision that “we are con¬
vinced that the distinctive and priceless
function of education in our society
warrants, indeed compels, our treating it
as a fundamental interest,” he was
carrying on a tradition of California
jurisprudence developed as a result of the
long battle against school segregation.
Over the course of a century, California
courts had held that because of its moral,
political, economic and social
significance, the right to education was
covered by the equal protection clause,
even to the extent that unintentional or de
facto interference with the right was
unconstitutional. For the State Supreme
Court to have found that education was not
such a “fundamental interest,” as the
United States Supreme Court did in San
Antonio School District v. Rodriguez,
would have been a radical departure from
California’s legal and historical record.

If the court stayed within precedent and
tradition in enunciating basic con¬
stitutional principles in the Serrano
decision, it broke new ground in applying
those principles. The school segregation
cases affected individuals and educational
access. Serrano affects school districts
and educational expenditures, and this has

raised new and perplexing questions. For
example, many “wealty” districts contain
large numbers of poor students. Should
Serrano' be enforced in a manner that
deprives minority-group children in
“wealthy” San Francisco, Oakland and
Berkeley of current levels of educational
support? Theoretically, at least, this
problem can be solved by the fact that
Serrano applied only to disparities of
educational expenditures produced by the
assessed valuation of districts. The
decision does not prevent the state from
providing categorical funds to certain
districts for special programs benefiting
low-income students.

A more fundamental question is whether
the court is correct in assuming that
educational expenditure is related to
educational quality. This probably has
been the most frequently criticized
element of the Serrano decision.
Researchers often point out that the level
of financial support seems to have little
effect on student performance as
measured by standardized achievement
tests. However, critics who rely on test
scores have misunderstood the issue, for,
as we have seen, California courts have
never defined the purpose of education as

Continued from page 1

The size of the job these two groups
faced in trying to make the California
public aware of the Serrano vs Priest
decision was measured in May, 1977, by a
Fieldscope poll — which revealed that 92
percent of the state’s population could not
relate the word Serrano to education or to
a court decision. Convinced that only in¬
formed public opinion could make the
decision work as a tool toward better
education in the state, the Coalition
produced brochures in four languages,
sponsored conferences, seminars and
workshops, and developed a background
packet for public meetings to help the
people in any school district work through
the requirements of the decision for their
own budget process.

For decades California parents have
known that schooling was not alike
throughout the state — that there were
“good” school districts and “poor” school
districts, and for families who had the
freedom to look around and choose where
to live, the reputed caliber of public
education in a district was often an im¬
portant factor in the choice. It wasn’t easy
to say what made a district “good” —
occasionally this was linked to the number
of graduating seniors who were finalists in
the Merit Scholarship competition, or the
fact that students scored regularly above
their grade level on standardized tests —
but generally it related to class size, to
laboratory equipment, field trips, well-
stocked libraries, swimming pools,
auditoriums, potters’ wheels, computer
terminals, even maintenance of buildings
and grounds — all of which were pretty
directly traceable to the availability of
money. When John Serrano in 1968, with
the help of public interest lawyers,
brought suit against the State of California
on behalf of his son, John Anthony
Serrano, because the boy could not get as
good an education living where he did as
he could have if he lived somewhere else,
the arguments were framed in terms of a
variable that anyone could measure —
number of dollars to spend per child.

From the start, the equating of
“quality” education with dollars to spend
made many people uneasy. Basic to any
discussion of what public education is or
should be, and how it should be supported,
must be some underlying assumption that

simple mastecy of skills that presumably
can be measured on achievement tests.

Instead, for a century, the State
Supreme Court has tacitly accepted the
very broad view of education posited by
such nineteenth-century educational
reformers as Horace Mann, Henry Bar¬
nard and John Swett. To these early
schoolmen, compulsory public education
was a matter of faith. The common school
would enlighten the populace, unify a
diverse and immigrant nation, instill
virtuous, thrifty and democratic values
and create non-violent social mobility.
Appropriately, in the Serrano decision
Justice Sullivan quoted Horace Mann’s
dictum that “natural law” established the
“absolute right to an education of every
human being” and required “the
correlative duty of every government to
see that the means of education are
provided for all.”

Ironically, at the very time the Serrano
decision was issued in 1971, the traditional,
optimistic faith in public education, on
which so much of Justice Sullivan’s
opinion was based, was coming under
attack. Radical and revisionist historians
concluded that since the industrial
revolution in America, schools had been

its impact on society or on the individual,
or both, will be good. In the most basic
terms, education is the passing on of the
skills and values of a culture to its suc¬
ceeding generations; a more primitive
society probably has less introspection
regarding the utility and appropriateness
of these skills and values. In a complicated
society such as our own, however, where
education has become thoroughly in¬
stitutionalized, utility and appropriateness
may again receive a minimum of at¬
tention, while immense energy goes into
the processes of feeding and controlling
the institution.

The contributions of humanists working
on the Serrano project have helped all who
took part to look at the nature and goals of
the system and its impact on individuals
and society. When progressive education
first made its appearance early in this
century, the question of how education
takes hold — what makes children learn —
was considered a philosophical rather
than a technical problem, though the
systematic carrying out of the im¬
plications of these theories drastically
altered the content of education and the
everyday techniques of teaching. A
counter-revolution now seems to be
gathering strength among parents who are
demanding a return to what they imagine,
at least, to be the old emphasis on basic
skills, achievement and discipline. It is
important to assess what parents really
want from the education of their children
and what it is their right to want. To what
extent should society set the goals of
education, and where do the rights of the
student enter? What accommodation
should be made for differentiating factors
such as intelligence or special talents?
Should both sexes have access to exactly
the same instruction? Is there any
legitimate role for wealth?

An overall survey of the problem yielded
several areas for humanists’ exploration:
whether education is a right and whether,
if it is a right, it is an equal right of all
young people in a society. How is equality
to be implemented and judged? On the
supporting side (the decision mandates
equity of taxing effort as well as
educational opportunity), does “fair” in
terms of taxes mean that everyone pays
an equal percentage of his income or that
those with higher incomes pay a larger
share?

agents of social conirol rather than
democracy. Public education had created
a docile labor force, prevented the
emergence of class consciousness,
inhibited emotional and spiritual
development and transferred control of
children from parents to educational
bureaucrats. Social critic Ivan Illich
contended that society had to be “de-
schooled” and the authoritarian system of
compulsory public education dismantled.

However, the defenders of the
traditional view of public education in
America shared one important common
conviction with their radical and
revisionist critics: both believed that
schools as institutions do make a dif¬
ference, that they are powerful forces that
affect society for good or ill. But in the
early seventies, other critics made the
profoundly conservative argument that
schools were paper tigers, that they had
little real influence on social change.

As early as 1966, Dr. James Coleman
concluded that family background, not the
quality of the school, was the most im¬
portant factor in educational per¬
formance. Christopher Jencks and his
colleagues analyzed Coleman’s data in a
Continued on page 16

The relationship of “quality” education
to dollars spent — do dollars indeed make
scholars? — is another field for humanist
debate. Is “throwing money at the
problem” only a way of creating a more
expensive problem? If teachers must be
paid according to a salary scale deter¬
mined through collective bargaining that
takes into account only semesters in
college and years of experience, how can a
district choose good teachers? If money
produces good education, why have young
people from some of the best funded school
districts in the state turned their backs on
the future that their schooling was to have
fitted them for and become, in fact,
aggressively anti-establishment?

Still another area is the connection
between support and control. If funding
responsibility is divorced from the local
school district, will highly prized “local
control” go with it? Does “local” control
mean district level or school-site level, and
which produces a better education? Can
opposing philosophies peacefully co-exist
within a district, and are they really op¬
posing or merely different?

The text of the Serrano vs Priest
decision makes clear its endorsement of
the value of education and its importance
to students if they are to take their place as
citizens equipped to participate in the life
of the community. The Court’s mandate
for action, however, is expressed in terms
of equalizing among districts the number
of dollars available to spend per child;-
doilars, that is, that form the bulk of school
support, dollars raised in .each district by
the levying of property taxes for schools.
Responsibility for compliance was put on
the State Legislature: reduce those
wealth-related differences by the fall of
1980, it was ordered, to substantially less
than $100 per child from district to district.

The Court did not, as recent rumors
have had it, outlaw the use of property
taxes for school support after 1980. The
language of the decision, in fact, implies
that the Court foresaw the continued use of
property tax monies to pay for schools and
was concerned primarily with insuring the
equitable district-to-district distribution of
funds so raised. This means that property-
rich districts with few children to educate
may no longer keep for the use of their own

Continued on page 16

— Serrano v. Priest: A New Beginning? —

PAGE 16 HUMANITIES NETWORK SPRING 1978

End of an Era?

Continued from page 15
well-publicized study and contended that
schools had little power to reduce sub¬
stantially the level of social and economic
inequality in the United States. If this were
true, what of the Serrano decision’s
assumption that educational expenditures
affected social mobility? Justice Sullivan
had claimed that education was the
“bright hope for entry of the poor and
oppressed into the mainstream of
American society.” By the early seven¬
ties, some social scientists such as Jencks
were saying this just wasn’t so.

Jencks is a socialist who advocates
structural changes in American society to
reduce economic inequality. But his
conclusions were grist for the con¬
servative mill. By casting doubt on the
social potency of the schools, he
challenged the faith in public education
which underlies a whole line of legal
reasoning justifying education as a
“fundamental interest” subject to the
equal protection clause. It is not surprising
that the U.S. Supreme Court cited Jencks
in its decision on San Antonio School
District v. Rodriguez.

Obviously, Christopher Jencks and a few
other social scientists were not solely or
even primarily responsible for the
Rodriguez decision. But their ideas are an
important part of an intellectual and
political environment that helps explain
the growing judicial caution in educational
matters. By 1970 the focus of court-ordered
integration efforts had shifted from the
south to the north and ‘west. As a result,
protests against judicial activism in
education became a national rather than
sectional phenomenon. In California,
federal court integration orders in
Pasadena and San Francisco created
bitter controversy. State Superior Judge
Alfred Gitelson’s 1970 desegregation
ruling in Los Angeles drew critism from
then President Nixon, Governor Reagan
and Mayor Yorty, and in 1971 Gitelson was
defeated for re-election, an almost un-
precendented event in California. In the
midst of growing opposition to “busing,”
and with “white flight” making in¬
tegration almost impossible in some
communities, the conclusions of people

such as Jencks were powerful, even
welcome arguments for judicial restraint
in the educational field. If schools make
little difference anyway, why insist on
rigid integration schemes and intervene in
thecomplicated matter of education
finance?

“Judicial restraint,” however, has not
meant full-scale judicial retreat in
California. Last summer, the U.S.
Supreme Court upheld the Pasadena in¬
tegration order, but the court lifted the
requirement that the Pasadena district
annually adjust its busing plan to maintain
racial balance at- each school. This may
become a formula for gradual re¬
segregation. Similarly in 1976, the State
Supreme Court upheld the Los Angeles
integration order, but without the strict
percentage guidelines contained in Judge
Gitelson’s- original decision. Last
December the state court also reaffirmed
its original Serrano decision, but while the
1971 opinion was supported by a 6-1
majority, the 1976 vote was 4-3. The court
now has three new members, and how
rigidly it will require Serrano to be en¬
forced is an open question.

It has been almost a decade since John
Serrano went to court, yet the case that
bears his name still generates more
questions than answers. The assumptions
that underlie an era of remarkable judicial
activism in educational matters are very
much in doubt. But John Serrano
seems to have very little doubt about the
effect of schools on his own children. He
brought suit after an East Los Angeles
school principal advised him to move his
son, John Anthony to another district. The
boy was a “near genius” and the principal
believed that the local schools had little to
offer a student of his abilities. The
Serranos did move, and John Sr. believes
his son thrived on “more school work,
more open space, more green and more
attention from the teachers.” The boy is
now getting good grades in high school,
excelling in athletics and planning a
career in either law, psychiatry or social
work. John Serrano says, “Obviously I
solved my kid’s problem. I moved.” But
whether he solved anyone else’s problem
by going to court remains to be seen.

California Council for the Humanities in Public Policy

312 Sutter, Suite 601, San Francisco, CA 94106 • 415/391-1474
136. Santa Monica College. 1815 Pearl St.. Santa-Monica, CA 90405 • 213/450-55 27

MARTIN N. CHAMBERLAIN
Chairman

Dean of University Extension
University of California, San Diego

JEAN R. WENTE

Vice-Chairman/Treasurer

Board Member, Oakland Museum Association

JOHN CONNELL

President, Michael J. Connell Foundation
Los Angeles

DAVID CRIPPENS

Vice President, KCET , Los Angeles

CLIFFORD L. DOCHTERMAN

Vice President, University of the Pacific,

Stockton

FRANCISCA FLORES
Executive Director,

Chicana Service Action Center, Los Angeles

AILEEN C. HERNANDEZ
Urban Consultant, San Francisco

W. TURRENTINE JACKSON
Professor of History,

University of California, Davis

ROBERT KANAGAWA

President, Kanagawa Citrus Company

Sanger

CHARLES KAPLAN
Professor of English,

California State University, Northridge

A. R. LOUCH

Chairman, Department of Philosophy,
Claremont Graduate School
WILLIAM M. MARCUSSEN
Vice-President,

Atlantic Richfield Co., Los Angeles

A. HAMILTON MARSTON
Retired Business Executive, San Diego

ALISTAIR McCRONE

President, Humboldt State University

LAURA NADER
Professor of Anthropology,

University of California, Berkeley

JOHN PFAU

President, California State College,

San Bernardino

WILLIAM ROBERTSON
Executive Secretary-Treasurer,

Los Angeles County Federation of Labor,
AFL-CIO

ARMANDO RODRIGUEZ
President, East Los Angeles College

ART SEIDENBAUM
Columnist, Los Angeles Times

CAROLINE SHRODES
Professor Emeritus,

San Francisco State University
RICHARD WASSERSTROM
Professor of Philosophy and Law,
University of California, Los Angeles

JADE SNOW WONG
Writer and Artist, San Francisco

STAFF:

BRUCE R. SIEVERS
Executive Director

MIKE LEWIS
Assistant Director

PHYLLIS QUAN
Program Officer

DOROTHY REED
Editor

CHRISTINA GOBLE
Administrative Secretary

A New Beginning?

Continued from page 15

schools the wealth that bubbles up from
property taxes on oil wells, industrial
parks, shopping centers, but must share,
through recapture by the State School
Fund, with districts that contain mostly
residences with many children. This is not,
unfortunately, so clear and simple as it
sounds. Many property-poor districts that
contain no industrial tax base are the
suburban homes of wealthy families who
have chosen to keep their communities
strictly residential and have, as in¬
dividuals, little need for help to support
their schools. On the other hand, large
cities contain business and industry that
make them property-wealthy districts, but
they also are the home of many poor
children.

The decision did not establish, nor even
suggest an appropriate level for equalized
spending. Whether high-wealth districts
should somehow be restricted to the
number of dollars available to the lowest-
spending districts — or the lowest-
spending should somehow be raised to
high levels — was left to the Legislature. It
might be suggested that the simplest way
to accomplish equalization would be to
have the state collect all school support
taxes and redistribute them according to
district enrollments — in effect, a state¬
wide property tax. Popular wisdom
predicts, however, that any Legislator
who proposed such a measure would be
digging his political grave with his own
hands, and whether this be true or not, no
such measure has been recently in¬
troduced in Sacramento.

The Legislative response to Serrano, a
bill without a name, known only as
Assembly Bill 65, regulates school district
money-raising and spending through a
complex set of calculations and formulas
that it hopes will please the court when put
to the test of a suit. An interesting political
possibility surfaced briefly after the
Legislature passed AB65; it was suggested
that a ballot proposition be drafted to
invite the people of the state to vote into
the Constitution an amendment asserting
that AB 65 did indeed satisfy the Serrano
decision. Since this proposal was not
carried out, it is to be assumed that the
Court retains jurisdiction, and the first

round of submitting the bill to its scrutiny
has already taken place, without waiting
for 1980.

Besides provisions to equalize wealth-
related spending potential, the bill also
appropriates extra funds for certain
special needs of individual students and
districts with unusual problems. To some
extent it addresses the concerns of those
who are looking for qualitative im¬
provements in education, and it does
require districts that receive this special
funding to set up procedures to account for
and evaluate their programs. But
basically it works almost exclusively
through allocation of money.

The contents of this Network are divided
between the humanistic and the technical
approach to schools and their funding.
Discussions by scholars are interspersed
with the language of legislative bills, and
some of the explanatory materials
distributed to the public are reproduced.
No one connected with the projects claims
to have found answers, but the work goes
on in the faith that information and
thoughtful exploration will lead to wiser
activity on the part of everyone connected
with the educational system — and that is
basically everyone.

The California Council for the Humanities is a statewide organization created to
support and promote the interaction between the humanities and public policy in
California. Funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities as a state-based
program, the Council provides grants to community groups, academic institutions,
and other non-profit organizations for programs of dialogues on public policy issues.
For further information write or call either of the offices listed at left.

Non-Profit Organization
U.S. Portage
PAID

San Francisco, Calif.
Permit No. 11379